


Underfoot

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Borrowers AU, Grandma Allura, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I plan on writing gore but we'll see, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance is Shō, M/M, Mini Hunk, Mini Keith, Mini Pidge, Mini Shiro, POV Alternating, References to The Borrowers, Studio Ghibli inspired, Terminally Ill Lance, The Borrowers - Freeform, Why does my brain do this to me, little people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8751613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Essentially The Secret World of Arrietty but with many changes including but not limited to the fact that it involves the cast of Voltron.Keith, Hunk, and Pidge used to be nomadic borrowers until finally "settling" beneath Allura's home. Keith is more than willing to stay where they are--they have easy access to the house, have no trouble finding supplies, and are safe for the first time in a long while. Pidge and Hunk, though, are attached to the idea of finding a new place, possibly better than the one they have now. Preferably with other people like them: a small community of small people. After many years of burdening his mother with doctors visits, medications, and other unpleasantries, Lance plans to spend the next several months at his grandmother's house. He used to spend his summers at Grandma Allura's until his sickness became too much, but now he has time. At least, as long as it takes for him to either die or miraculously feel better. He wants to take it easy, and just relax with Grandma Allura and her helper Haggar. But how much can he really relax when he swears there are small people living beneath the house?





	1. To Grandma's House We Go

**Author's Note:**

> I plan on making this kinda dark, but I don't know when, or if, I'll get there. So for now it's rated Teen And Up Audiences simply because there's swearing here and there.

It had been years since Lance last spent the summer at his grandparent’s house. He supposed that had something to do with the fact that until now, his grandma hadn’t been alone. And it wasn’t that he _minded_ spending time with her—it was just annoying that his mom constantly reiterated the fact that “Grandma Allura’s lonely, and she needs company.” 

He groaned to the side as his mom said this, yet again, at the train station platform. “But you call us every day, and remember—” she was saying, rummaging around her purse as she did so. Looking for something that she didn’t have, because Lance was carrying it in his backpack.

“My medication. Yes, I know—we went through the bag, like, _six times_ back at home,” he muttered. _And back at the car_ , he reminded himself. _And pretty much every day prior to today_. 

His mom retracted her hands from her bag, clasping them in front of her as if to refrain from snatching him into a hug again. Lance gave her a weak smile, and promptly realized it was because of the lump in his throat. He wouldn’t see her again for _months_ , but it was for the better. After this, she would head back to work—this time more emotionally drained than usual now that her youngest son was off her high-priority list.

“And Grandma’s helper has your schedule, in case you forget,” she added after a brief pause, and this time her voice was hesitant, shaky. 

He couldn’t take it anymore. Lance rushed forward, dropping his duffle to throw his arms around his mom one last time. Her soft, curly hair tickled his cheek and the smell of vanilla and cinnamon surrounded him. She wrapped her arms around his torso, her hands clutching the side pockets of his backpack.

“I love you, don’t you forget that,” she said. “I’ll call you tonight to see how you’re doing.”

“Okay.”

The floor shifted underneath them, and the rumble of wheels running their course across the train tracks approached at a rapid speed. Lance turned in time to watch the front lights pass them by with a gust of wind that sent his jacket rippling, and his mom’s hair buffeting in the quick breeze. 

The line of boarding passengers started to move, and, distracted, Lance found himself swept up into another hug. His mom pressed a kiss to his cheek before hurrying away from the passenger’s line. 

He felt like he was forgetting something…

 _Dammit_ , he hissed to himself, grabbing his duffle off the ground and running after his mom. 

He caught up with her in time to bend down and kiss her cheek, saying, “Love you too—see you in a few months!”

After he boarded the coach and climbed the stairs to the second floor, he claimed the last remaining window in that section of the train. His backpack pressed between his legs, he looked out the window to the platform where, as the train picked up pace, he eventually passed his mom. She was already on the phone, but waved as he passed, eyes perking up and smile wide.

Letting Lance stay with his Grandma Allura was probably the best thing for his mom’s stress level.

Sure, he had other siblings, but their current positions were either off to college, our just out of college getting settled in. He didn’t want to intrude on their lives, especially with that bag of medication lingering in his backpack. He stared at the open zipper for a moment before his paranoia got the best of him and he took out the bag.

After counting through the pill bottles for what certainly wouldn’t be the last time, Lance settled on listening to music and staring out the window until he realized that he was staring at his reflection the entire time. The landscape was flat and dull, but if he knew anything about the trip to Grandma’s, it was that the flat lands would eventually pass.

And they did, several hours later. The train passed underneath mountains, pitching the cabin into darkness, and the greenish lights projecting above the seats. When it came out the other side, it was to the mist of a waterfall passing over the trees. Lance pressed a hand to the window, staring out at the hill dipping down from the train tracks, and then dropping away completely as he was carried over a great chasm. They were on a bridge, and then a cliff face, between the green and the blue of the earth and the sky.

There were dozens of stops throughout the night, once darkness hit. He slept easily enough for a train ride, and the thrilling hum of his heart in his chest. Train rides always excited him—it wasn’t every day he found himself traveling across the country via train. 

In the morning, Lance’s alarm went off on his phone, and he began to look out for his stop. When it came, he gathered his things and hurried down the stairs to the first floor. He snatched his duffle off the shelf and regretted it instantly. Still out of breath from the stairs, Lance put his hand to his chest and inhaled deeply. The tenseness of his throat eased away.

On the platform, he looked around between the columns, and it wasn’t hard to recognize her. His grandma was always one to stand out, especially with her voluminous white hair tied up in a poofy ponytail like that. She hardly looked the age of sixty-three.

“Grandma!” Lance shouted, and his voice instantly brought her eyes to him. She rose from the bench, clutching her purse to her stomach as a smile overtook her expression. 

He hurried to her, which only seemed to make her panic. “Careful now—let me take your bag for you,” she suggested.

Lance rolled his eyes, adjusting his duffle strap onto his shoulder. “It’s _fine_. Besides, you probably aren’t the strongest anymore so I can handle it.”

She put her hands to her hips now, quirking an eyebrow up at him. “ _Anymore_? I will always be the strongest, dear. Now give me that duffle. I swear your mother will be able to tell if I don’t and give me an earful.”

He didn’t give much of a struggle as Grandma snatched the bag from his shoulder and yanked it onto her own. Lance rolled his eyes and said, “Did she pester you about calling every night, too?”

Grandma Allura narrowed her eyes at him as she turned towards the exit. “ _Did she ever_. Now come on, let’s get you home. I’m sure you’re exhausted—those seats aren’t exactly the most comfortable, I am certain of this.”

The ride to his grandma’s house was short, but seemed to take them completely away from civilization. Her quaint house was positioned higher than the neighborhoods and the eclectic downtown main street. It was down a private road that occupied several other landowners, and ended in a gravel path, divided down the middle by a strip of grass. It led them to the front wooden gate, and blocking their path was another car.

“Oh, that must be Haggar. I suppose we can get out here. Do you need help with the backpack?” Grandma asked, nodding to the bag sitting between Lance’s legs. He shifted his knees to look down at it.

“No, I can manage,” he said, pushing open the door and stepping out onto the gravel.

The air was surprisingly fresh, and Lance felt a prick of guilt for not remembering it. It was fresh, like grass cuttings and dewey mornings, wild violets and strawberries. As he slipped on his backpack, he meandered over to the wooden fence as he heard his grandma shout for Haggar, the helper, to come assist with Lance’s luggage.

At least the house looked exactly like Lance’s mental image from several years prior. Even after grandpa died, it seemed like Grandma Allura refused to let up on his usual tasks of tending to the gardens. The roof shingles were coated in ivy, and the yellow siding was lined with bushes along the ground. 

He stepped in to the yard, and startled the beast laying not too far away. He gasped at the sight. “Rover!” he shouted, smile growing as he threw open his arms and awaited the sloppy kisses of the sparky old hound.

Rover was monstrous, even for an Irish wolfhound, but she was the sweetest dog Lance had ever met. She lumbered over, blue collar dangling around her neck, and butted her head up against Lance’s hipbone. He staggered a little, laughing, and scratched his fingers behind her ears. 

“I missed you, girl. How you been? You been good? Aw, look at you,” he cooed, crouching now to rub his face against hers. She licked across his chin, slobbering over his cheek. 

As Lance managed to subdue Rover with belly scratches, she rolled over onto her back, head lolling to the side. Just as he got to scratching her armpits, a startling growl rippled up her throat.

Lance retracted in surprise, wondering if he scratched the wrong spot, but realized that Rover’s eyes were trained elsewhere. A hunter’s gaze.

“What is it?” he asked, crouching after her as she laid close to the ground, facing the bushes beside the yellow siding. 

Just as Lance was about to interrupt again, Rover lunged with a wild bark. He stumbled away, staring wide as Rover seemed to startle something in the bushes. She leapt straight through the branches, her collar catching on the wood, but she didn’t let up her barking even as the creature made a beeline through the bushes—too short to reach above the blades of grass.

Lance pushed himself up, eyes following the scared creature before going to Rover. He unhooked her collar from the bush, and glanced back at where the animal disappeared. 

From the front of the house he heard Grandma shout, “Lance! Are you hungry?”

After a moment, he touched his stomach and considered the offer. He hadn’t eaten since dinner the previous night. “Starving!” he shouted back, making his way to the front of the house. 

As Grandma Allura asked what he’d like, from the ground Rover sniffed her way between the grasses and wild violets. Her ears were perked, furry snout rustling with each frantic sniff. Eventually she found her way to the underground air vent, and upon seeing a small head of black hair peering up past the cement ledge, Rover howled and stuck her nose between the bars. 

The figure stood back on one of the broken pieces of cement leading down from the ledge, just far enough to avoid being sucked in by the rapid intakes of breath from the dog. He reached down and picked up the leaves he set down and held them over his head. 

“See you later, _mutt_ ,” he said, sticking his tongue out at Rover. The pup growled in return, baring her teeth. 

The boy jumped from stone to stone until reaching the flat, dusty surface of ground level. He hiked to the mound of bricks stacked between the spokes holding up the house above ground. Light filtered in through the air vents around the exterior of the house, and allowed the boy decent light leading up to a small window where he then stuffed the leaves in, followed by his feet, and then his entire body. He shut the window and disappeared within.

He could already hear his name being called from within. “ _Keith!_ Where’s Keith?” The boy rolled his eyes, discretely nudging his prize herb leaves away from view before the door suddenly burst open.

A heavy-set fella stumbled in, panting hard. “Keith, thank _God_ —I was worried you—wait a second, wait a second—” 

“Nice to see you too, Hunk,” Keith drawled, leaning a hand against his bed frame, directly in Hunk’s line of view of the leaves. 

Too bad Hunk already saw them.

“Those are new. _Those are new!_ You went out again, didn’t you!” he whined, causing Keith to wince internally. “You _know_ not to go out without Pidge, especially when Allura has a visitor around. _Pidge_ is one who needs supplies, _not_ me.”

“Cooking still constitutes as a valid reason for making a run,” Keith argued, reaching behind him and tugging out a heavy, smooth-edged leaf that left delectable oils on his fingers. He’d smell like basil for _weeks_. “ _Which_ , is why I grabbed you some of this. Besides, Pidge and I are going later to get building materials.”

Hunk eyed the basil leaf suspiciously before slowly reaching over and snatching it. He still glared at Keith as he said, “Thank you. It means a lot to me.”

“I knew it would.”

“Don’t get cocky,” Hunk warned, to which Keith sniggered at. “Next time I’m going to _tell Pidge…_ ” As soon as he started that branch, Keith deflated, turning paler than usual.

“Please don’t—”

“I’m going to _tell her_ , and then _she’ll_ be the one having this conversation with you, _not me_ ,” Hunk snapped. “Besides, you couldn’t even wait until tonight? You and Pidge are supposed to go on a run and—” as Hunk whined, Keith’s shoulders sagged and he groaned aloud. “None of that! None of that! Now hand over the oregano. Right there—I see it right there! Stop hiding it!”

Bitterly, Keith snuck out the oregano leaf from his stash and, head down, passed it to Hunk. “Thank you,” Hunk said bluntly before taking leave of the room. Before shutting the door, he peered back in and said, “No going out before dinner.”

“Yes _mom_ ,” Keith jested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't. I can't believe my brain did this to me. I'M SUPPOSED TO BE ON A WRITING BREAK.
> 
> I don't think I've heard of this idea floating around anywhere, but I love all the Studio Ghibli and Voltron art crossovers and thought, "You know what? What if Keith was tiny."


	2. Family Meltdown

Keith was approximately the size of a regular little finger. Hunk was always slightly larger than that, and given his heavy physique, Hunk often outweighed Keith and Pidge combined. Of course, they were never capable of weighing one another, aside from rough estimates from picking one another up. It was no wonder Hunk worried about them, though. While Pidge was a living monkey, capable of scaling walls and swinging across chasms via rope, Keith wasn’t quite so spontaneously feather-like. Pidge’s even smaller size made flying through the air easy, which explained why she was currently using feathers to create usable hang gliders.

They had a large collection of feathers stashed between the bricks underneath their home. Keith always brought back materials that would be suitable for flight—from lightweight fabrics to leaves to feathers. Leaves never really worked—eventually they grew crisp and dry and failed to maintain the constant flexibility needed to soar. 

Later that day, before dusk would bring the evening bats, Keith accompanied Pidge out of the air vent. She stepped over to the edge of the cement and leaned out, peering up at the ivy overhead. Keith surveyed the yard. Rover was gone.

“All right—here’s what we’re gonna do,” Pidge said, marching back to the bars. She reached behind them and slipped two hang gliders out. “You think you can carry both of these?” she asked.

Keith raised an eyebrow at her, and she merely rolled her eyes. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “We’re going up to the roof this time.”

“The roof?” he repeated, now leaning out of their hiding spot to look up at the ivy. He wasn’t all that concerned about carrying the hang gliders—he was more concerned about the height factor. He’d only ever been to the roof a handful of times, and each time the forest of ivy leaves were practically the only things preventing the birds from spotting him as a midday snack.

Pidge was already hopping off the cement and onto the petiole of a leaf. She clung to the stem and looked back at Keith, who continued to stare at her as if she were insane. 

_As if Hunk needs to worry about me_ , he thought to himself as he shouldered the straps on the feather hang gliders and started up after Pidge.

It took a while for Keith to navigate the petiole branches, especially with the feathers getting caught on the large ivy leaves. The sunlight glowed green through their transparent surfaces, and cast translucent shadows over Pidge as she climbed above him. She helped move the leaves around Keith, brushing the shade away from him to make way for the feathers. Eventually they reached the top, where Pidge pulled him up and let him take a breather as she double-checked the mechanisms on her hang gliders.

“Right, so I’ll be going first,” she said, and instantly Keith was on his feet.

“What? No way—I’m not letting you go first, what if it doesn’t work and you fall?” he argued.

“Either way the same goes for you—what if _you_ fall?” she countered, putting a hand on her hip and glaring at him, her nose scrunching up. The wind buffeted them, rustling the leaves, and causing them both to stagger. Pidge fell back, the feather catching on the breeze like a sail. Keith held onto her and a nearby leaf petiole, and once they recovered, she glared even harder. “Besides, _I’m_ the one who knows how to use it. I’m just testing if it works properly.”

The wind came again, but this time they were lower to the rooftop, sheltered by the leaves and feathers. The wind didn’t seem to be favoring their plans at the moment. “At least wait until the breeze dies down,” Keith said.

Just then, they heard something shift behind them. Pidge ducked down, flipping onto her stomach with her arms over the feather hang glider. Keith peered discretely over a leaf, having to stand to do so, and saw one of the second story windows of Allura’s house being opened.

The boy—Allura’s grandson—pushed his hands up against the frame of the window. It got stuck, so he slammed the heel of his palm against it and dislodged it. Once the window was locked in place above his head, he ducked underneath it and leaned his torso out. 

Keith ducked down out of view, mostly due to the fact that Pidge grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him back to the ground. “Stay down,” she ordered, ducking to the side to avoid the spaces of sunlight peering in through the breaks in the leaves. 

He could see the edge of the boy’s hair just before he ducked back inside and walked away from the window.

“Coast is clear,” Keith said, looking back to the edge of the roof. “And the wind is gone.”

Pidge leapt to her feet then and began fastening the harness around her torso and shoulders. She dipped down into the gutter and after navigating around the damp leaves, she climbed onto the ledge. Keith fastened his hang glider vest to his chest and stood on the other side of the gutter as Pidge glanced back at him, a nervous smile tugging at her lips.

“Wish me luck,” she said.

Pidge turned back to the yard and bent her knees… and lunged from the ledge. Keith’s heart seemed to plunge straight through his ribcage to follow her. He scrambled towards the ledge, and leaned over the gutter’s rim just as the feather began to soar upwards, the wind catching on the hook-shape of the feather. Soon he couldn’t even see Pidge’s hands gripping the small ropes that allowed her leverage over the current carrying her upwards.

She began to descend, and Keith waited until he was able to see roughly where she landed—near the forest edge, among the dense weeds lining it. It was specifically where the lawn mower couldn’t reach. Either way the trek back to the house would take some time.

Keith shook out his hands before reaching for the ropes of his hang glider. He climbed up onto the ledge of the gutter, and, staring down at the ground so far below, managed to convince himself to step off towards it. His feet dropped, and the momentum sent the feather jerking up above him and swinging him into the air. His legs swept forward, and a wild laugh escaped him. This feeling of absolutely weightlessness sent his heart soaring, and his hair in all different directions.

The leaf carried him over the trees, and he recalled Pidge’s motions—he glided his way back towards the yard. The world spun around him like he lived and breathed in a massive glass orb. The forest merged into his vision on the right, and he came back to start his descent down to where Pidge most likely was—

Just as he spotted Pidge’s feather peaking out from the grasses, a flash of brown swept in front of him, startling him to the point where his arm jerked and sent the feather back up into the air.

The force of it sent the feather spinning out of control—whipping him in a completely circle before finally gaining control again. His breathing was rapid as he looked for the speck of brown again, and found it gliding towards the ground, where Pidge was. 

Keith knew he recognized that figure now landing in the weeds.

When Keith managed to float close enough to the ground to see them clearly, Pidge shouted up at him, “Keith! He’s back!” with her arms in the air. 

The man standing beside Pidge was anything but a stranger. He was the size of Hunk with a far more defined build, and skin tan from the fact that he lived wherever the wind took him—literally. When he raised his hands up to reach for Keith’s legs, the folds of his flying suit made it appear as if his arms and legs were attached to one another with lightweight brown fabric.

“Shiro—?” Keith said as his feet touched the ground again, his arms guided back down by Shiro’s hands. He didn’t let go instantly—instead, Shiro tugged Keith closer and enveloped him in a hug. Shiro’s body was warm compared to the wind that carried Keith’s body no more than a minute earlier.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How are you?” Shiro asked, but Keith merely stared at him once they broke away from one another. “I’m guessing I came in just in time. Let me see your glider,” he said to Pidge, turning away from Keith to pick up the harness she held out to Shiro.

Keith continued to stare at Shiro until the conversation turned back to the obvious: what the plan was from here on out. “We’ve been organizing our things since you last left,” Pidge explained. “We want to move.”

“Well, it isn’t set in stone yet,” Keith argued, but Pidge overlooked it.

“Have you found anything? Any possible places we could head to?” she asked, looking up at Shiro as they stepped ahead of Keith, pushed through the blades of grass, and emerged out of the weeds. The sunlight fell over them, and Keith squinted at it as he heard Shiro say:

“I’ll tell you all about it when we get back to the house.”

_That means he’s found something_ , Keith mused to himself, his steps slowing before he realized that he was falling behind. He hurried to catch up, dragging the hang glider behind him. 

Keith knew what Pidge was looking for, and Hunk as well. The last place they settled down at was among other people—people who were like them. A small community of small people, which just seemed fitting, especially for Hunk and Pidge. Prior to that, they were on their own again, only, they survived as nomads. It hadn’t really occurred to them to settle down until meeting that community. 

It was safer just to stay in small pairs. He was quick to realize this, unlike Hunk and Pidge.

So Keith continued to stare at Shiro’s back, as if hoping to convince him to not share whatever he planned on spreading to Hunk and Pidge. Most likely false hope of a place better than the one Allura unknowingly provided to them.

They reached the air vent a while later, and once Shiro hoisted Pidge up from the rock nestled against the siding, he turned to Keith. 

“I can handle it,” Keith said, narrowing his eyes and letting Shiro go ahead of him. He tossed the feather up before following suit, swinging a leg up and pushing himself to his feet on the concrete ledge.

Just as they gathered at the bars of the air vent, Keith turned back in time to hear the back door opening. He could see where the porch jutted out, and hear Haggar say, “Don’t stay out too long. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be _fine_. I’m just going to sit on the deck,” the boy was saying, at the same time Pidge called out to Keith: “Come on, or else we’ll leave you behind!”

“We won’t leave him behind,” Shiro muttered, dropping down onto the brick below the ledge, in the shade underneath the house.

Keith glanced at them before looking back at the porch. He could barely see the back of the boy’s head, but it was enough to convince him that this change in Allura’s house wouldn’t be terrible, no matter what Hunk’s paranoia told him.

He jumped off the cement and used his hang glider to soar to where Pidge and Shiro were already on the ground level, heading towards the house of bricks. Keith hit the ground running to prevent himself from face planting, and seemed to startle them both in the process. They didn’t seem to consider the idea of hang gliding indoors until Keith dropped down from the sky in front of them.

  


  


Lance used to hate reading. 

It had something to do with the fact that his mind couldn’t possibly be expected to study small characters for an extended period of time. Reading text like that was tough to concentrate on, but given his current circumstances… he couldn’t really complete all that much on his bucket list without dying in the process, now could he? Skydiving would most likely kill him at this point.

But his mom convinced him reading would be a good use of his time, now that he had all the time in the world. Being ill had its perks, but it also made him numb at the thought that he _wouldn’t_ be able to skydive. He always wanted to skydive…

Lance read out on the deck, his foot absently rubbing against Rover’s stomach. He could smell the rain coming, and when it did, it poured from the drain pipes and dribbled against the deck stairs. It didn’t take long for Haggar to come out and usher him inside, away from the chill that came with the rain.

“Let me get you some tea—your grandma’s just in the other room,” she said, gesturing to the set of doors leading to Grandma Allura’s sitting room. 

Lance went to it, and knocked on the frame to get her attention. She looked up from the book sitting in her lap, and after lowering her reading glasses, smiled brilliantly at him. “Looking for something?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” he confessed, stepping into the room and looking towards the shelving unit behind her. The room itself was narrow, and the wall facing the front yard was entirely composed of windows now speckled with rain droplets. The freckled shadows ran across the bookshelves and Lance walked the length of it and back to the chair beside Grandma’s.

“What have you been reading?” she asked, nodding to the book in his hand.

“Oh, um… something for school,” he said, turning the cover upwards to show her. “ _Catcher In The Rye_.”

“Ah, a favorite of mine,” she said, laughing. “Though, I admit I have many favorites. What do you think of it?”

“I guess I didn’t expect to read something so… _angsty_ in college-level English,” he laughed, and she chuckled behind her hand before reaching for it. He handed it over. “It’s one way to decide that I really shouldn’t complain much.”

“Oh, you have plenty reason to complain,” his grandma murmured, and looked up sparingly at him. Her hair was spotted with blue, rain droplet shadows. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” he said, rubbing his hands between his knees. “Mom talks about it enough when I’m at home. I really just… want to forget about it for now.”

His grandma studied him for a moment before pursing her lips and nodding, returning the book to him. “Fair enough. Now allow me to further enlighten you on the wonders of no longer caring what the hell you do in your young adult years—”

“Grandma, don’t swear,” Lance moaned, pushing his hands against his face. “Mom’s right—you really don’t have a filter anymore.”

“I didn’t tell you to interrupt,” she chastised, reaching over and giving him a light slap on the knee. “I don’t care _what_ Holden Caulfield tells you—it’s a bad idea to drink scotch at your age and an even _worse_ idea to get a hotel room with a hooker.”

“ _Grandma—_ ”

“All I’m saying is that we’re all _dying_ , but that doesn’t mean you have to go all out to enjoy what’s left of life,” she said, and he spared a look at her through his fingers. She was watching him with those crystalline eyes that seemed to only grow paler with each coming year. She settled back into her chair, propping her book on her lap as she continued. “There’s no shame in passing life by in a house you’ve lived in for over forty years, reading a book about an existentialist kid undergoing a mental breakdown. It’s one way to _avoid_ a mental breakdown, you understand me, right?”

It was as if she knew exactly what was on his mind. He lowered his hands from his face, and drew his feet up onto the cushion of his chair. After nodding hesitantly, he turned away from her. Grandma Allura always had a way of reassuring him, even when her gaze was so calculating and analytic. 

“I guess I’m just… annoyed that I’m sort of past the time in my life where Make A Wish Foundation could take me to Disney World and it wouldn’t come off as _weird_ , you know? Or doing anything crazy like that. But I see your point,” he said with a small smile. “Nothing wrong with relaxing until I either die or something entirely different happens.”

“And entirely different doesn’t seem all that bad,” she added. “At least you’re doing your homework in case that happens.”

He found himself laughing, startled by her spontaneous sense of humor. She grinned, the worn skin around her lips pulling as she laughed along with him.

“Besides, you never know what exciting things might happen here—which I know is entirely against your mother’s recommendations…” she said, tapping a finger to her lip as Lance scoffed, now leaning back in his chair.

“Whatever. It’s not like she’ll hear anything about it unless either of us tell her,” he said, and the both of them shared a sly grin as they heard Haggar knock on the door and enter with tea for the both of them.

  


  


“I just don’t think it’s necessary for us to leave, all right?” Keith was saying, aware that Pidge’s face was red and her fists were shaking.

“We’ve _talked about this!_ ” she hissed at him. “We’re leaving!”

“No, we aren’t,” he insisted, splaying his hands flat on the table. “We’re perfectly fine where we are. There’s no point in picking up _everything—_ do you realize how much we’ll be leaving behind? We won’t be able to take everything, Pidge! That means most of your building supplies, your _hang gliders—_ ”

“The building supplies are _for_ getting us elsewhere!” she countered, and looked frantically to Hunk in hopes of gaining some momentum against Keith. Hunk just looked stressed out, watching them with a panicked look on his face. “ _Hunk_ , talk some sense into him!”

Hunk moaned a little under his breath, aware that Keith was now glaring at him. “Well…” Hunk started, “Pidge _did_ build the thing, you know, to carry all our supplies…”

“ _Hunk!_ ” Keith shouted.

“What?!”

“We’re _leaving_ ,” Pidge said.

“ _Staying!_ ” Keith hissed.

“Leaving!” 

“ _All right!_ ” Shiro’s voice broke between them, and instantly Pidge threw down her fists onto the table, causing everything on it to rattle. Keith crossed his arms, countering her furious pout with one of his own. “Clearly the three of you haven’t come to a decision yet. And that’s fine, but honestly there isn’t a rush. Whatever the outcome, I’ll stick around until you’ve finalized your choice.”

“It isn’t that we haven’t _come to a decision yet_ ,” Pidge bit out through clenched teeth. “We came to a decision until _Keith_ suddenly decided he didn’t agree with it out of absolutely goddamn nowhere!”

“I never even said I agreed with it!” he snapped. “Don’t put words in my mouth!”

“ _Whatever_. It’s not like you ever disagreed during all this time I spent _building something_ that would help with our next move! We’ve never stayed in one place for so long before—why are you suddenly so attached to it, huh? I thought we weren’t supposed to settle down in the first place!” she shrieked, and as she came to a close, her chest was heaving and the skin around her eyes was red. She reached a hand underneath her heavy glasses, rubbing at one of her eyes before saying, “I’m so damn tired of this place. I don’t want to stay here.”

“Give me one reason why you don’t think this is the perfect place to settle down,” Keith demanded, and received only a glare in response. “There is literally _no reason_ why we shouldn’t stay here.”

“I don’t think we should talk about this anymore today,” Hunk murmured from the side. 

Pidge sniffed, turning her nose up and saying, “Forget it. I’m done. Do whatever the hell you want—I’ll be in the shop.” 

As Pidge turned on her heels and stormed through the door, Keith kept his eyes on the table, as Shiro came to stand opposite him, leaning a hand on the surface. “That… did not go swimmingly,” he commented.

“Sorry about that, Shiro,” Hunk said. “I guess we… haven’t exactly talked it over as much as we thought we had.”

Keith felt the urge to scream, but by some incredible force of willpower, he managed to keep it at bay. He hated being pegged as the difficult one, but that was exactly what Hunk and Pidge were doing to him now, whether they wanted to or not. 

“It’s fine. Tonight I’ll go through some of my journals and find the information I had on the town,” Shiro said. “There were others. Six others, actually—probably seven by now, considering there was a little girl on the way.”

“Adorable,” Hunk cooed. “What’s her name?”

Keith’s insides were spinning with rage. He couldn’t see straight knowing that Hunk and Shiro were talking about their future with people they _didn’t know_ in a place that _wasn’t home_. He couldn’t stand the idea of idly sitting on the sidelines while Pidge and Hunk packed up their house to move. And he would be stupid to admit he hadn’t seen them packing already.

He pushed away from the table and swore he heard Hunk protest something, aimed at him, but he brushed it aside and slammed the door behind him. He was barely halfway down the hall to his room when the kitchen door opened, and quick footsteps followed him.

A hand pulled him back by the arm, and he turned to find Shiro standing in there, concern seeming to stitch his brows together. “Keith, where are you going?” he asked.

“My room,” he answered, bluntly and with enough annoyance to shed himself of Shiro’s hand. “It’s not like any of you are even _considering_ agreeing with what _I_ have to say anyway so—”

Shiro’s expression became intolerable to look at. Keith hated seeing guilt, wherever it was, and Shiro was displaying every bit of it on his face at that moment. He faltered, looking down at their feet standing several paces from one another until Shiro stepped forward to close the gap.

“I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone,” he reminded Keith, laying a hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t enough to prompt Keith to look up at him. “But Keith—you mean a lot to Hunk and Pidge. They aren’t going to go anywhere without you, I hope you realize that. And I know what you’re thinking—”

“ _No_ , you _don’t_ ,” Keith snarled, shoving Shiro away with both hands planted firmly against the older man’s stomach. He staggered back, scowling up at Shiro now. “You don’t get to have a say in what I do anymore, all right? So don’t act like you do and _leave me alone_.”

Reassured that Shiro wouldn’t follow him, Keith took off down the hallway and stormed into his room. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, his forehead pressed to the wood and his fingers clawed against the hard surface. His heart was beating fast—it was like Shiro was always capable of knowing just what Keith was thinking. Shiro always knew just what pushed his buttons, and the idea of Hunk and Pidge ganging up on Keith terrified him.

If Hunk and Pidge decided not to listen to Keith anymore—

He didn’t want to consider the idea of them just… leaving him behind. There was a reason Keith chose to stick with them after being left behind the first time.

After a while, Keith realized that he was still standing against the door, and the only reason he realized this was because a knock sounded on it. Startled, Keith stepped back and debated just ignoring the call, but something urged him to answer it.

He peaked through the crack in the door, and came face-to-face with Shiro again. “What do you want,” Keith deadpanned.

Shiro rubbed the stubble on his chin absently, glancing away from Keith as he said, “Earlier… you guys mentioned a supply run tonight.”

“Yeah, well, it’s probably not gonna happen now,” he answered, rolling his eyes and preparing to close the door.

Shiro held his hand out, stopping Keith. “What if it was just the two of us then? Either way you’ll be going eventually,” he suggested. “Besides, I’ve missed going on runs in Allura’s house. Remember when I took you and Pidge on your first run here?”

Keith narrowed his eyes, meeting Shiro’s gaze and holding it for as long as it took for him to come to a conclusion. With a sigh, he said, “Fine, we can go.”

After Shiro left him, Keith wandered to the center of his room before turning to the side and collapsing face-first on his bed. Going on a run sounded like so much fun before this massive, calamitous family meltdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I can't believe this happened](http://gurlskylark.tumblr.com/post/154080001980/the-secret-world-of-arrietty-au). I am out of control. No one can stop me, not even _I_ can stop me.


	3. Little Problem

“You said it was just the two of us!” Both Keith and Pidge shouted profanities. Even when angry they seemed to either say the exact same thing, or the exact opposite. In this case, they were on the same team even when they weren’t.

Shiro smiled guiltily at them, holding both hands up in surrender. “It will be easier to carry more supplies with three of us than two.”

“We usually go with two _anyway_ ,” Pidge hissed at him before shooting a pointed look at Keith. “And I’m _not_ going anywhere with that stubborn bastard anyway.”

“ _Stubborn bastard_ ,” Keith repeated under his breath, folding his arms across his chest. He turned away from them, knowing Shiro was probably sweating out of the sheer stress of getting them to work together. 

“Okay, I admit, this was mostly just to get you two out of the house together,” Shiro confessed.

“You’re barely around. You don’t get to play therapist trying to fix our problems,” Pidge snapped at him.

“It was partially Hunk’s idea,” Shiro said.

“Oh, so Hunk’s in on this?” Keith said sarcastically, “Then maybe _he_ should come along too, huh? Since this just seems to be one big _family reunion bonding activity_.” 

“Keith…” Shiro groaned, and just then Pidge started to walk away. “Pidge, come on—”

“Nope.”

“No.”

“Okay, fine!” Shiro blurted out, throwing his arms up. “I know it’s really not my part anymore, and that you two are independent and all, but the way you both are acting is childish and unacceptable. Either you come with me, and prove that you can set aside your differences, or I _swear to God_ I will leave right now. I didn’t come here to tear you three apart, but clearly that is what is happening here. Prove to me that isn’t the case. _Please_.”

Pidge paused on her way out of the kitchen, a hand on the doorframe. She turned back around slowly, and Keith glared furiously at Shiro. Through clenched teeth, he hissed, “You _literally_ just got here. You’re not gonna leave.”

Shiro folded his arms over his chest, and Keith swore the look on his face was smug. “Do you _really_ want to put that to the test?”

“But you can’t leave! Not so soon!” Pidge whined.

Shiro shrugged. “Too bad.”

Both Pidge and Keith scowled at him, and then at each other. Their resentment festered into reluctant compliance. “Fine, I’ll go,” Pidge said. 

“Same,” Keith muttered, still scowling at Shiro as the older man beamed in triumph.

The three of them prepared for the run. Keith tugged on his boots over his tight-fitted pants, and Pidge did the same from the other side of the bench. She shouldered her large green backpack with the lamp hooked to the back of it, and Keith swept the hook of his grapple into one of the folds of his backpack. He shouldered the rope and turned to Shiro, who slipped the straps of his rucksack onto his shoulder, approaching the front door. 

The underside of Allura’s house was dim and muggy with the summer night filtering through the air vents. They stepped down from each of the bricks and landed on the dusty floor, washed over in bluish moonlight. They came to the nails embedded in one of the support beams and one-by-one, they climbed the ladder.

Within the walls of the house, they were pitched into complete darkness until Pidge lit the lamp and gave them a path to the narrow set of stairs that would take them upwards. Shiro waited on the ground level for them, peering both ways down the narrow alley before following suit. The first step was a bit of a leap, and even Pidge needed help to reach it. Shiro hoisted himself up and placed a hand to steady himself on the wall. Keith looked back at him before turning his gaze up to where Pidge reached the landing.

Halfway there, both Keith and Shiro paused at the sound of something below. Pidge’s lantern creaked as she moved it out over the platform

Down below, the light cast long shadows of the stairs across the floor, and from the black flanking them on either side, they began to hear the scratch of claws against the wood. Shiro came up behind Keith, and with a hand constantly on Keith’s back, they moved upward in time to avoid being spotted by the rats coming into view. Three of them emerged from the dark, sniffing the air, and testing the scent they left behind coming into the house walls. 

When they reached the platform, Pidge’s eyes were wide in her magnifying glasses, and turned to stare at Keith and Shiro as they came to tug her away from the edge. “Let’s keep moving,” Shiro suggested. 

Rats usually gave Keith the creeps, mainly because of their magnificent size. Of course, they were nothing compared to humans, but rats were… terrifying creatures, even more so than Rover. It was easy to maneuver around Rover’s dumb dog senses, but rats were another matter. From the times when he was a nomad with Hunk and Pidge, they heard plenty of horror stories about rats, with their sharp, oversized buckteeth and heavy, whip-like tails. Just one swipe of a tail could cut off the head of any one of them.

Keith gulped, watching the rats look up at them and become disinterested, moving along into the darkness.

“Haggar has a container full of bottle caps,” Pidge whispered to Shiro as they peered into a crack in the wall paneling. The light highlighted Pidge’s mess of reddish-brown hair, and then glinted off her glasses as she looked over at them. “They’re in the kitchen.”

“All right. This way,” Shiro replied, voice hushed as they walked the narrow ledge holding together the wall panels. Keith was used to this, of course, but the height never ceased to send his heart into disarray. People of their size had to get used to great heights, but they terrified him nonetheless. For the most part, he was used to feeling terrified and therefore was capable of reigning it in.

He released a heavy breath as they squeaked into the cupboards of the china cabinet. The upside-down tea cups stood like soldiers in the moonlight filtering through the kitchen window. Keith followed Shiro and Pidge between the dishes, watching the white highlight their faces, and their tense shoulders as they surveyed the kitchen from the cabinet ledge.

“There,” Pidge murmured, pointing across kitchen countertop. “And then in the pantry… Do you think we could get crackers for Hunk?”

“I don’t see why not,” Shiro whispered. “We’ll have to set them somewhere and come back for them. Does Rover still sleep upstairs?”

“Yeah. She’s getting old though. I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be sleeping upstairs,” Keith answered, slipping off the rope from his shoulder. 

There was a sliver of a crack on the cabinet ledge, and Keith latched his grappling hook to it before letting Shiro secure the rope around his waist. Shiro tugged on it hard, and nearly sent Keith ramming straight into his chest. He chuckled a little before patting Keith on the shoulder. “Good luck. We’ll come down after you.”

He nodded stiffly and glanced over at Pidge, who was studying the pantry as if mapping out where the crackers would be.

Keith dropped off the ledge swiftly and used his feet to kick off the wall leading down. His feet touched the tiles, and once safely grounded, he untied the rope and watched as Shiro and Pidge gathered it back up for their usage. 

In the distance Keith heard the clock ticking, ticking, ticking. It seemed to echo and reverberate through Keith’s legs and up to his chest, rattling his brain as he stared up the impossible distance where Pidge was now descending from. Keith stepped back from her landing zone, and once she untied the rope, it was just the two of them. 

The echo of the clock seemed impossibly loud now.

Pidge stared at the ground with her hands on her hips, her lips set into a permanent frown. Keith scowled at her, and they went on like this until he realized that Shiro wasn’t coming down. He looked up in annoyance, and found that Shiro was actually peering down at them from the ledge, taking his sweet merry time tying the rope around his waist.

“I’m… _sorry_ , I guess.”

Keith blinked sharply, his attention returning to the ground where Pidge scuffed her boots on the ground. She pocketed her hands in her puffy, oversized pants. He nearly thought she hadn’t said anything at all, but he _swore_ he heard her apologize. 

“What?” he said numbly.

She shrugged irritably, looking up at him and snapping, “I said I’m sorry, okay? For earlier. It was a dick move.”

“Oh.”

“ _Oh_?” she repeated. “That’s all?”

“Well…” he drawled. “It _was_ a dick move.”

“Really? That’s all you’re going to say?” she hissed, oblivious to the cheeky grin on Keith’s lips. “So I guess I’m the bigger man now that you can’t even reciprocate a goddamn _apology_. I don’t even care if it’s half-assed at this point, you were a dingbat and—and—and you’re laughing. I guess I can’t expect anything better from you.”

He bent over his knees, grinning at her as she pouted at him, her golden eyes slitted. “I’m still mad at you,” she huffed. “But I accept your apology.”

“And I accept yours,” Keith said. “But I’m not going to hug you.”

“Agreed.”

Not even a second later, they heard the sound of Shiro’s feet kicking off the wall, and soon he dropped down to the ground and grinned cheekily at them. Keith punched him in the arm before Shiro could even untie the rope from his waist. “I assume everything went well here on the ground?” Shiro asked.

“Fuck you,” Keith muttered, turning away so Shiro couldn’t see his smile.

Shiro chuckled, and with a harsh flick of his arm, the rope sent up a wave that unlatched the grappling hook and sent it towards the ground. Pidge staggered away from Shiro as he snatched the hook out of the air and turned towards the kitchen. “Bottle cap first,” he said.

They started across the kitchen, their footsteps nearly unreadable with the soft pads of the boots. The tile was slick and yellowish under their feet, coming out white where the moonlight touched ground. As always, Pidge loved to slide around on it, knowing that Haggar always swept the floors clean each night before she shared a glass of wine with the lady of the house. Keith swept Pidge back up after a brief tumble, and they approached the wall Pidge intended to scale.

“I could always go,” Shiro suggested, but she waved him off, already slipping out four strips of double-sided tape.

“Please, Shiro, leave this to the light-weights. And I’m not talking about level of alcohol consumption,” she said. The tape ripped free of the roll and she stuck it to the bottoms of her feet, followed by the pads of her hands. She tested them on the wall before passing the tape over to Keith, who latched his grappling hook to her backpack and looped the rope over her shoulder.

She began the ascent, and whenever she moved a limb up, it came away with a suction-like sound popping free of its surface. Keith and Shiro spotted her until she was too high up to secure.

“You and Pidge on better terms yet?” Shiro whispered to Keith.

He scoffed, looking away as he said, “You arrogant bastard. You totally planned this.”

He heard Shiro snicker, bracing his hands on his hips as he said, “That may have been the case.”

Keith chuckled and said, “You know, even if you aren’t around a whole lot… you’re still part of the team. And I take back what I said earlier. I’m not as experienced as you—I even when I say I don’t… I appreciate your advice.”

He suddenly felt the weight of Shiro’s arm dropping onto his shoulders. Startled, Keith let himself be roped into a side hug with Shiro, just seconds before he heard the sound of Pidge knocking on the countertop, signaling the descent of the bottle caps. 

Keith slipped off his backpack and claimed one of the caps. Shiro took the other and together they stuffed them into their bags, regardless of the size of them. They barely fit into the backpacks. “We still need room for the tissue,” Shiro murmured.

“We’ll manage—I can fit half in my bag,” Keith said. “You?”

“Nothing else. I emptied out most of my things before the run, too,” he said, just as Pidge dropped to the ground next to them. She flicked the rope and sent the grappling hook soaring. Keith leapt forward and snatched it out of the air before Pidge could even try. 

“Gotta be quicker than that,” Keith jested.

“Yeah, or _taller_ ,” she countered, yanking it out of his hand. 

As she looped up the rope, they started towards the pantry where a crevice was made, just above the first hinge in the door. To reach it, it required Pidge to use her sticky tape mitts to climb up and toss down the rope for them. Keith climbed up first, his hands grasping for the rope with each tick of the clock. Once up, Shiro started his ascent.

And then they heard the noise.

It was a familiar sound they often heard above their brick home. Shiro hiked up the rope from the floor, just in time for the swinging door in the kitchen to push open. 

Shiro shoved himself against Pidge and Keith, and he realized why instantly: Shiro’s clothes and hair were entirely black—he was the perfect camouflage in this small nook in the kitchen. But thankfully, they weren’t faced with a paranoid Haggar tonight. 

Allura’s helper, Haggar, was someone Keith wouldn’t mess with, not after several close calls with Pidge a few months back. She was far younger than their esteemed lady of the house, but her pure white hair tricked many into exaggerating her age. As she swept into the room, a hum in her step, Keith realized she was out to clean the wine glasses—in other words, clearly a bit tipsy.

Shiro relaxed, his upper back pressing into Keith’s shoulders just before he turned and encouraged Pidge to take the lead into the pantry.

The water started running in the kitchen as Pidge, Keith, and Shiro swung into the pantry in search of crackers. They scaled the wall via the feather duster hanging on a hook, followed by the broom and dustpan. Pidge was the first to leap onto the shelf, and she held a hand out to steady Keith as he followed her lead. 

Shiro hopped on and steadied himself on Keith’s shoulder. “Haggar moved things around two weeks ago. I think she noticed the marshmallows missing,” Pidge whispered, her voice barely detectable even to Keith.

“Marshmallows? What did you need those for?” Shiro countered, narrowing his eyes. They both offered guilty expressions. “Just… tell me it wasn’t the massive ones.”

“It may have been. It was a struggle fitting it through the nooks and crannies,” Pidge confessed, wincing a little at the memory. Keith remembered it well enough to recall that they had to shove both of their weight against it to shove it through the doorway of the house.

He swore he heard Shiro mutter, “Unbelievable,” under his breath.

Pidge leapt up onto the nearest food can with the help of Keith as a step stool. Shiro hoisted Keith up, and the two of them jumped from can to can to the boxed goods on the other side of the shelf. They hunted down the opened cracker box and, after training their ears on the noises in the kitchen, determined that Haggar had left the room.

The bag in which the crackers were stored was crinkly and loud, so it was good that Haggar had gone off to bed. Pidge slipped out three crackers and stuffed them into her bag. They were able to fit four in before closing the box as it had been before, and heading back to where Shiro waited on the shelf. All of their rucksacks were circular now.

“There’s a tissue box in the bathroom, and each of the bedrooms, but we don’t have easy access to the bathroom,” Pidge reminded Shiro.

“The guest bedroom?” he suggested, and both Pidge and Keith shook their heads. “Why not?”

“Allura’s grandson is here,” Keith explained. Shiro brought a hand to his chin, thinking. “But it shouldn’t be a problem. He likely doesn’t know a thing about us, so he’ll brush us off as… the mice or something.”

“Unlike Haggar and Allura,” Pidge agreed. “Guest room it is, then.”

They returned to the cabinet where Pidge would climb up and drop down the rope, allowing Keith and Shiro to ascend. They returned to the wall where she would lead the way to the cord that would swing them up to the second floor. One-by-one they held onto the cord that whipped them skywards, and deposited them onto a wooden panel. Keith stepped onto it and smiled at Pidge, who held the lamp out for Shiro to see down below. 

They followed the edge of the wall paneling, until Shiro stopped them in front of the hole. Gently, he pushed it open, and allowed them to enter first. 

Their footsteps were soft on the padded flooring. The room was decently sized, with chairs and tables the size for them. There was an elaborate fireplace where Pidge migrated, studying the portrait hanging above it before turning back to Keith. The room here always cast a melancholy vibe over them. Shiro observed the room skeptically, as if expecting a trap somewhere in the room. He left the wall panel open on the other side of the room. 

It was a dollhouse. 

Keith always found it ironic that dolls happened to be manufactured as the same size of him, or Hunk, Shiro, or Pidge. It was as if humans _knew_ people like them existed, and made their own fake copies for children to play with. Keith supposed it was better for children to play with pseudo-small people than the real deal. Still, it never ceased to give him the heebie-jeebies.

Shiro cleared his throat, rubbing a hand down the side of his face as he seemed to avoid all the elaborate portraits, the elaborate vases, china, and chairs fit for them. “Let’s… keep moving. Pidge?”

“On it,” she whispered, hurrying across the room. They followed suit, slowly, methodically exiting the dollhouse without making a sound.

Keith glanced back at the dining room, where they entered. Without Pidge’s light, the room was pitched into an eerie darkness. The light from the moon that _did_ happen to filter in, though, glinted off the metal of the chandelier, and the crystals dangling from it. 

He heard Shiro whisper his name, so he picked up the pace and jumped onto the panel ledge, against the wall. They skirted the wall before coming to the nightstand, where the tissue box sat beside the heavy-set ceramic lamp. The box itself was within a decorative case, and Keith used one of the embossed swirls as a stepping stool. Pidge followed him up, along with Shiro.

Keith took the far end, crouching down in time with Pidge and Shiro. Together they grasped the edge of the tissue. Together, they tugged up hard, freeing an inch or two of the tissue. Pidge stuck her tongue out at Keith, as if challenging him, _Is that all you’ve got?_

He chuckled under his breath, turning back to the tissue just as something ahead caught his attention, just over the lip of the tissue. 

A gasped escaped his lips, and he tugged the tissue up, not quite covering his eyes as he stared directly into the wide, black eyes of the boy in the bed.

The instant they both seemed to register that they were staring at one another, Keith’s entire body nearly flung him off the tissue box when the boy bolted up in bed, shrieking, “Jesus H. Christ— _shit!_ ”

The thud of the kid falling on the ground sent them all staggering on the tissue box. Keith lunged off the tissue box, barely catching Pidge as she fell back on the nightstand. The horrible crunch of the crackers caused them both to wince, and then the voice of the boy to say, “Shit—please don’t tell me your bones are that fragile—”

Shiro grabbed Pidge and Keith by the collar of their shirts and plunged them into the shadows of the ceramic lamp against the wall ledge. Just as he did so, the kid recovered from the ground and scrambled to the nightstand. Keith clutched to Shiro’s shirt, aware that they were all breathing hard, their hearts pounding in their chests—

The tissue box went up in the air, the boy’s hand gripping it as he scoped out the the nightstand. He pushed aside the vase holding a bundle of fresh flowers. The kid was leaning around the bed-side of the nightstand, and Keith hurriedly realized what this meant: if the kid so much as looked between the wall and the lamp, he’d see them.

He pushed Shiro ahead of him, towards the dollhouse. It would take no more than five seconds to get there—they had to at least try. Realizing what Keith was suggesting, Shiro took off, grabbing Pidge as Keith followed after them. Shiro shoved Pidge in front of him, and they were halfway there—almost there—

“Wait—wait, don’t go—” 

A shadow fell over them, as Shiro and Pidge made it to the door. Keith lunged for the dollhouse deck, only to collide with something warm and soft blocking his path. Instantly another came from behind, effectively trapping him in the hands of the boy. 

The world was so incredibly dark, trapped in the boy’s hands. Keith was sweating, he felt sticky, and even he could hear the boy’s pulse humming between his fingers, against his palms. The motion of being lifted made him feel sick to his stomach. _No—no, no, no_ —

The instant even a speck of light touched Keith, he lunged for it, frantically kicking as he jumped and grabbed the edge of the boy’s hand. He chomped down his teeth on the boy’s finger, and sent the kid squealing. “Ouch! You _bit_ me!”

The boy’s hands opened slightly, and Keith shoved his feet against one of the boy’s fingers. He parted his jaws and clamped down, again, only to have his hips tugged on, pinched between two of the boy’s fingers.

The force of it was too much to allow Keith to hang on to the boy’s fingers. Soon he was dangling, kicking, trying to grab onto something. 

He squirmed just enough to startle the kid into dropping him.

He screamed before he could stop it.

Suddenly something bumped into him, frantically grappling to catch him. He used the momentum to kick off, and scramble onto the ledge of the wall panel. Before he could give the boy the chance to recover, Keith sprinted, heart pounding, body sticky with sweat, towards the house. He lunged into the dollhouse, and slammed the door shut behind him.

The boy plucked open the door, cursing and moving to the front of the house. Lance swore he’d never seen anything like that. The—the creature _looked_ like a _human_? How could that be? But… he never meant to _scare_ the damn thing into biting him. He supposed he deserved it—he _had_ picked the creature up without permission. Did they even talk? _He wanted to know_ —

So he unlatched the hooks on the dollhouse and swung open the front of it. He scoured the rooms to no avail. The small human completely vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am YODELING I can't. I can't believe Lance just did the THING.
> 
> Tell me what you think of the story so far! I'd love to hear where you think this is gonna go (evil, diabolical laughter in the background).


	4. Buttons For Frisbees

“Well that was a complete shit show,” Pidge hissed, slapping down her lantern onto the kitchen table. They were all out of breath. Keith was certain they all sprinted the rest of the way home, and he didn’t blame any of them, least of all himself. His entire body was shaking, and it didn’t feel like anything until he finally stopped running.

“What is it? What happened?” Hunk exclaimed, rushing into the room in time to watch Keith completely collapse, his pale complexion giving way to the fact that he was entirely lightheaded. Pidge yelped, and Shiro reached out in time to catch Keith and lower him to the ground gingerly.

He rolled Keith onto his back, and not long after, Keith groaned awake, saying, “I need water.”

“Hunk—”

“On it.” The _blip_ of water being swept up sounded, and a moment later a glass was held to Keith’s lips. Shiro helped him sit up, and a moment later he pressed the back of his hand to Keith’s forehead. “Okay, what the hell happened? Why did Keith just faint? Can someone tell me _something_?!” 

“Allura’s grandson _literally_ had Keith in his clutches. Like, I’m talking full-on hand-cage no drill no warning just… boom.” Pidge clapped her hands together to demonstrate, and Hunk slapped his hands over his mouth in horror. Keith looked at Hunk to find the man’s brown face deathly pallid.

“Are you all right?” Shiro asked, leaning in front of Keith so that Shiro was all he saw. Keith blinked absently, setting the glass down on the nearby bench.

“I’m fine,” he croaked, swallowing hard as he pushed himself to his feet. “I’m gonna… lie down for a little while.”

“I-I’ll make you some tea,” Hunk stammered.

“Make that two,” Pidge muttered, collapsing onto a chair.

“Three,” Shiro corrected.

“And four makes me, all right. Four it is then,” Hunk said, setting to work with the teapot. Keith stared at them all for a moment before unsteadily walking out of the room. Realizing Keith was a bit wobbly on his feet, Shiro came to assist, and wrapped one of Keith’s arms around his shoulders. Once successfully deposited onto his bed, Keith threw his arms over his eyes and groaned.

“The kid’s gonna tell Allura…” he moaned dreadfully.

Shiro stared down at him, leaning a hand on Keith’s bed frame. It was woven with dried grass leaves, and spotted with flowers Hunk once picked for Keith. Shiro distractedly plucked one out and surveyed it as he said, “That is… probably the case.”

Keith dropped his hands, feeling his eyes swell with warmth. “Well, that’s it then. We can’t stay here after that fiasco.”

“Keith…”

“We should have just risked the bathroom. It would have taken all damn night but at least _this_ wouldn’t have happened—”

“Keith,” Shiro said sternly, pressing a hand to Keith’s hair. Keith grudgingly looked up at Shiro, and the amount of pity in Shiro’s face made him sick to his stomach again. “Don’t think about it. We’ll discuss it in the morning. Get some rest.”

Shiro smoothed his hands over Keith’s hair before leaning down and placing a kiss on his forehead. Keith let out a shuddered breath and nodded. “Hunk’s making tea. I’ll have him bring it in when it’s done,” Shiro said.

“Okay,” he said, voice barely audible. If he spoke any louder, Keith was sure his voice would break.

  


  


The following morning, Lance bolted out of bed and tore the dollhouse apart. 

Well, not _literally_ —the dollhouse itself was valuable, and he could tell just from the intricate detail put into it. But that meant there _had_ to be secrets hidden in it. And he found the secret after pulling the dollhouse completely away from the wall, no matter how much strength he had to put into it. It left his chest aching and made his head dizzy, but at least he could see the small crease where the wallpaper pattern was, near the panel ledge. The pattern itself was ornamental, and one of those very ornaments was precisely cut to create a minuscule entrance for small people.

Lance pushed the wooden piece in with his finger, but all he could see through it was the darkness between the walls. Annoyed, Lance put the house back and sat on the floor until a knock sounded on his bedroom door.

“Lance, breakfast is ready!” Haggar said.

“Okay! Be down in a sec!” he called back, and after one last glance at the dollhouse, he got up to head downstairs.

As he started down the steps, Lance couldn’t seem to stop staring at his hands. He _held one of them_ in his hands. He even had two small bite marks to prove it. It’d been so dark though, he couldn’t see much of the detail of the small person’s face, other than the stark, black hair and reddish coat. They were like real people, only on a smaller scale.

In the dining room, he found Haggar laying out the plates, and Grandma Allura already sat across the table from him. She beamed at him and said, “Did you sleep well?”

Lance forced his analytic brain to not take that as a trick question. Of course she wouldn’t have known what happened last night. “Well enough,” he answered. “The bed as comfortable as I remember it being.”

“That’s good. I hope you like French toast,” she said, and nudged over the syrup bottle for him. He thanked her for it, and as Haggar took her seat alongside Grandma, Lance hesitated over cutting up his meal. 

After a moment, he looked up and said, “I, um… last night I noticed the dollhouse in my room. Has that always been there?”

Grandma grinned a little, looking up from her plate as she said, “No, actually. It was something your mother and grandfather worked on when she was younger. When she moved off to college, your grandfather had it put in the attic.”

“They _made_ it?” Lance repeated, shocked. “Why would he put it in the attic, though.”

“Well, he and your mother believed that there were little people, living in the walls. They made the house for them, but after so many years of waiting for them… it’s a bit disheartening. I’m sure that’s why your mother stopped visiting, when I brought the dollhouse out of the attic.”

Lance fell silent for a moment before saying, “Do you think there actually are little people in the walls?”

Grandma Allura took a bite of her toast before saying, “Anything is possible, Lance.”

“Why, have you seen them?” Haggar asked, quirking a slim white eyebrow in his direction.

He knew then that his over-analytic brain wasn’t tricking him now. “No, I don’t think so,” he replied. 

Admitting that certainly didn’t stop him from scouring the entire house that day, though. He circumnavigated the entire house, inside and out, before returning to the spot where he first suspected he saw the small human retreat from the bushes. He brought Rover with him, to sniff around, but she was easily distracted by the butterflies. He let her wander off as he surveyed the track he saw the little person take, and followed it to several possibilities—the ivy on the siding, a hole in the ground by the hose, and the air vent. 

The air vent seemed most likely.

Lance returned to the house and cut a small slip of paper out from one of the scraps in Grandma’s office. He wrote a small note on it, and left it at the air vent, topped with a clamshell button to hold the paper down.

  


  


It was overcast the day Keith woke up after nearly having his heart ripped from his chest by a _goddamn human_. He felt as if his entire chest cavity was bruised simply from the shock of it. He clutched at it as he rose, grunting with the effort, and remembered the tea Hunk brought in early, _early_ in the morning. It was chilled now, but Keith drank it anyways. Even cold, Hunk’s tea always tasted sweet and just right.

At the time he woke up, it was past dawn, which meant Pidge was most definitely asleep, and after the events of the following night, Hunk probably was as well. Shiro was to be determined—but Shiro was often an early riser. One brief glimpse into the guest room told Keith that Shiro was still asleep.

He crept to the kitchen and cut himself a slice of bread from the breadbox, and held it between his teeth as he slipped on his boots and slipped his arms through the sleeves of his reddish-brown jacket. There was a safety pin attached to the back of it—often there to secure his rucksack if necessary, or for other miscellaneous purposes. It was small for a human, but it was the perfect size for Keith.

Pidge made moulds for smaller-sized metal materials, like the silverware they ate with, or functional pins for making clothes. She even made the Holy Scissors—it took over five tries to make one that actually _worked_ , and they were the only pair of scissors any of them bothered to use. The Holy Scissors were a blessing to them all.

Keith exited the house and hopped down the series of bricks to the ground. He brushed aside his hair and secured it back with a bit of elastic rope just before approaching the wall to the air vent. 

He scaled the cement brick wall and hopped onto the ledge. He stayed on the safe side of the bars, squinting out at the landscape. Dawn passed a while ago, so Keith could see the heavy clouds lingering overhead. Droplets of dew gathered on the blades of grass that overshadowed the air vent ledge. After assuring himself that the dog wasn’t around, Keith stepped between the bars and stepped over to the dewy grass.

He gingerly pulled at a slim leaf, where the indent of the vein collected circular water droplets. He caught a drop in his mouth, and wiped his chin dry. The water was chilly, but fresh, and seemed to spread across that heated, burned part within his ribcage. It made him feel better.

Until he turned to the side and saw a button sitting on the stone ledge.

Keith glanced back into the air vent, and then again to the yard. None of them would have left a button sitting out like that—and then he thought of Pidge’s bottle caps and wondered if…

Buttons would make excellent wheels.

Keith slowly approached it, and bent down to examine it. He lifted up the pearly white, four-holed disk, only to release the flap of a note. Frozen in place, Keith leaned out over the ledge to look towards the deck. No one was there. 

_Why would he…?_ Keith asked, and quickly shook his head, altering the question: _How did he know I’d come here?_

The obvious solution was to avoid convincing the kid that Keith, or Pidge, or Hunk were anywhere near here. He set the button back down, in the exact position he found it in. Convincing the boy that no one was around to take it would have to suffice. It was a small, last-ditch effort, but the best Keith could come up with. Either way the chances of them leaving were nearly incontestable.

He moved to the wall and dropped down, feet dangling off the ledge. He stayed there for most of the morning, changing positions, until eventually he heard his voice being called from the house. He leaned through the bars to shout back, “Over here!” before returning to his place. Shiro found him with his legs propped up against the wall, head angled so that he could stare across the concrete to where the boy left the note. 

Shiro noticed it almost immediately—of course, after noticing Keith first. “I imagine you’re just waiting for the kid to come check on the button,” Shiro commented.

“That may be the case.”

Shiro stepped over to him, so his feet came in direct line of sight of the boy’s letter and button. “I wasn’t going to take it,” Keith told him, turning his eyes up to Shiro’s.

“Good, but you really shouldn’t be prodding the fire here. Come on, before someone sees you,” he said, nodding towards the house. With a sigh, Keith let his legs fall to the side and he grudgingly got up to his feet. He looked back at the letter once more before following after Shiro, and down the cement brick wall.

Later that day, though, after having a long, tiring talk with the rest of the group, they heard the sound of thunder. The weather turned dull the day prior, and they weren’t at all surprised by it. Keith found himself studying it, wondering why the rain bothered him, until he realized—

 _The letter_.

The rain would ruin it for sure, and goddamn he wasn’t going to let that happen, at least until he read what it said. He didn’t have to do anything with the letter after that. He could just put it back, and it will be like he never touched it.

So at his first chance, Keith lunged out of his bedroom window and ran straight for the air vent. With his soft-soled boots, he barely made a sound. He swept his legs up onto the ledge and ran for the button, nearly tripping himself on the way there.

There were droplets sitting on the button when he arrived, and he slid them off, away from the letter, and slipped it out from underneath it. With a sigh he realized that the button saved the words from spreading into a massive blob of ink. He propped the button under his arm and pulled at the folds of the letter. At its full size, it was approximately the length of Keith’s entire arm span.

 _I’m sorry if I scared you_.

Keith glared at the note.

 _Scared_ him? That was a little more than the classic fright. Keith hadn’t felt so endangered since the close encounters with Haggar and the rats, and even then he was never directly _assaulted before_. 

Before he could stop himself, Keith ripped the letter down the middle, bundled it up in his hands, and chucked each piece of it into the curtain of rain. He would have screamed at it had he not snuck out of the house. Then they’d know for sure that he wasn’t around.

It meant they wouldn’t suspect a thing if Keith spent another hour out here.

Keith yanked off his backpack and jabbed the button into it. After securing it onto his shoulders again, he ran for the nearest leaf petiole and swung onto it. He began his ascent, fuming the entire way to the rooftop. 

The gutter was a torrent of sloshing, leaf-infested water that he hurtled past. The shingles were slippery and slimy and he climbed his way up by securing his feet on the woody stems of the ivy. He was absolutely soaked by the time he reached the second story window, the one he once saw the boy leaning out of. Keith sneered at it as he yanked up the sleeves of his jacket and scaled the siding leading up to the windowsill.

The window itself was open—thank _God_ for that—though the screen was closed. At the corner of the screen, a bit of it seemed to have come loose. Keith slipped through it, not caring if he made a racket at this point.

The kid was in his bed—with the rain pouring outside, he hadn’t even heard Keith come in. The windowsill was speckled with mist, which helped steady Keith’s footing as he yanked the button out of his backpack. He held it parallel to the ground, and with all the adrenaline pumping through his veins it took almost no effort for him to frisbee it across the room.

His aim was deadly, but he was already disappearing out the window before he could see the result of the button clocking the boy straight in the cheek.

“Ow! What the hell?!” The kid shrieked, slamming his book shut and floundering for the object that fell onto his comforter. When he realized what it was, his attention immediately lifted to the direction of the attack—the window.

Keith ducked between the ivy and clung to the branch as he heard the kid get up from his bed. His footsteps approached the window as he said, “I guess you got my note then?”

Keith all but festered in his silence, clutching to the branch as if he was wringing someone’s neck. 

“Oh come on, I know you’re over there. Or can you not understand me?”

“I can fucking understand you. I’m not an idiot,” Keith snapped, raising his voice so that the kid could hear it over the rain. After a moment he said, “Have you told anyone?”

He heard something settle against the windowsill, and just the slightest glance told Keith that the kid had his arms folded over the windowsill, his chin resting against it. “No. I haven’t told anyone.”

“Good. Then _stay away from us_. Don’t send us letters, or goddamn buttons. We can take care of ourselves fine without _you_ interfering.” 

“Us? So there’s more of you?” the kid repeated.

Keith seethed from behind the leaves. 

“Look, I already said I’m sorry for earlier, if that’s what you’re mad about,” he said, “I really… shouldn’t have done that. I wasn’t thinking.”

“ _Wasn’t thinking_?” Keith gawked, laughing bitterly at the thought. “It’s because of _you_ that I won’t be able to stay here. Humans aren’t supposed to _see us_.”

There came a pause, and as Keith boiled with rage, his fists tightening on the leaf’s branch, his ears filled with the sound of rain pattering against the leaf blade, and sliding down the siding.

Eventually, the boy spoke up. “If you’re leaving, I might as well know your name. I’m Lance.”

Keith continued to glare at his own hands, until he realized that his grip was loosening. Hearing someone else say something like that, about Keith leaving, made his chest constrict. The tightness in his fists lessened, and seem to accumulate around his heart. He _really_ didn’t want to leave this place. 

Eventually he noticed that he hadn’t said anything, and it worried the boy—Lance. “Hey, are you still there?” he asked, sounding as if he was preparing to stand up and check.

“I’m still here,” Keith said quickly. “My name is Keith.” _Idiot_.

“Well Keith, I’ll most likely have a bruise from where you hit me with the button,” Lance said, the laughter in his voice nearly prompting Keith to forget why he came storming up here in the first place. 

Before Keith could come back with a snarky remark, something sounded in the distance that was faint and muffled by the rain. He turned away from the window, looking out over the yard and searching for the source until it came again, and this time, he registered the name it called. _Dammit_ , he hissed to himself. _I can’t even get an hour to myself_.

“I have to go,” Keith said.

“Wait!” Lance exclaimed, his hand touching the window screen as if to yank it up and reach out to Keith through the rain. The water was streaming down Keith’s face as he stepped back from the window, still guarded by the ivy. “Come back, okay?”

“If I did it’d be like I forgave you,” Keith shouted, jumping onto a branch and adding, “I don’t forgive assholes that easily.”

“You little shit.”

_Well, at least he’s got the ‘little’ part right._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chanting* Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight.


	5. Moonbeams

“Since when did you become an absolute _idiot_?” Pidge shrieked, yanking Keith between the air vent bars by the arm, and then by the ear when she got him down to her level. He winced, slapping her hand away and straightening his jacket.

“Cool it, all right?” he said.

“ _Cool it!_ Cool it, he says, right after he confronts the source of his near-death experience,” she erupted, fuming as she looked to Hunk for assistance. Hunk merely shrugged, looking desperate for answers all on his own. 

Pidge turned back to Keith, ignoring the fact that Shiro took a step forward and started with, “Well, we should probably—”

“You shouldn’t have talked to Allura’s grandson. End of discussion.”

“That wasn’t the initial _plan_ , per se,” Keith said, scratching the side of his face as he watched Pidge’s shoulders bunch up to her ears. 

“Then what _were you thinking_?! Hm?” she demanded, her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline.

Just then Shiro stepped between them, holding Pidge back with a hand on her shoulder. “Whatever the case, what’s done is done. There’s no changing the fact that Allura’s grandson knows about us now. And we have to trust that he hasn’t spread the word yet.”

“I don’t think he will,” Keith said, drawing Shiro’s attention to him. 

The man’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you so sure?” 

Keith shifted uncomfortably, and shrugged, looking out at the rain before saying, “He just… didn’t seem like he would. _Don’t_ give me that. He’s just curious is all—he doesn’t mean to.. sabotage us or whatever.”

“Oh yes, that’s some solid evidence we have right there. Trust Keith’s intuition,” Pidge hissed, crossing her arms and noting the disapproving look Shiro gave her. “You can’t be serious. If it weren’t for the fact that I still have two more wheels to attach to the axels, and an engine to fix, we’d be gone already!”

Keith didn’t say anything. It was pointless to argue the matter now. Keith nearly being captured was the turning point, and if that hadn’t solidified it, then him talking to Lance certainly did. He licked his tongue over his teeth and watched as Pidge stepped back from them.

She pointed to Keith then. “Tonight we’re gonna get the last two bottle caps, and the tissue for weaving together the bags. We’re going to the bathroom this time.”

He huffed, and after a moment of silence in which she waited impatiently for his approval, he muttered, “Fine. Sounds like a plan.”

“Good.” With that, she hopped down to the nearest brick and descended towards the house. 

Hunk turned to Keith and Shiro then, his eyes tired and red from worrying. “Maybe you…shouldn’t run off like that anymore?” he suggested to Keith. “You know how Pidge is. She’s just worried about you.”

“I know,” Keith murmured. “I’ll… try not to worry you guys so much. Thanks Hunk.”

He nodded, and patted a hand on his and Shiro’s shoulders before heading off after Pidge. Shiro had his arms folded across his broad chest, and a look of absolute disappointment on his face. Keith pinched his lips together and looked towards the grass. In the rain the grass looked a whole lot like piano keys, with the rain droplets hitting them and springing them back up with delicate little _plip_ s.

Shiro’s hand settled onto his shoulder, and when Keith still didn’t look, he pressed two of his fingers to Keith’s jaw. Shiro’s brows were drawn close, and he was frowning as though trying to read something from afar. “Have you… always been like this?” he asked. 

“What do you mean?” Keith countered, his eyes turning to hard slits.

“I just… you’ve always been so careful,” Shiro said. “I find it hard to believe that suddenly _now_ you’re careless. And I’m not saying last night was your fault—it definitely wasn’t.” 

Keith brushed Shiro’s hand off and stepped back, only to bump his shoulder blades into the wall, and nearly his head. He scowled at Shiro, aware that until now, it _wasn’t_ normal. It wasn’t normal for any one of them to be caught by humans, because they all took such great care to avoid detection. 

And now Keith had a full-fledged conversation with a human on his records.

“I only say that because I care about you,” Shiro confessed. “I don’t want… to see something like last night happen again.”

“It won’t,” he insisted.

“You don’t understand, Keith,” Shiro stressed, reaching his hands out as if he wanted to throttle Keith for being so infuriating. “ _Last night_ I thought you—I thought I wouldn’t see you again and that _terrifies_ me. And yes, you escaped, but… you never saw the look on Pidge’s face when she thought you were gone.”

Keith dropped his gaze to the ground as Shiro went on, the guilt beginning to fester in his chest. It was one thing to see guilt on someone else’s face, but on his own it was just pure torture. He hadn’t meant to make everyone worried when he went to see the boy, Lance. He hadn’t meant for them to find out at all. That was his mistake, he supposed.

But that didn’t change the fact that he shouldn’t have talked to Lance in the first place.

“I-I’m sorry,” he apologized, “It won’t happen again. I won’t talk to the humans again. I just—I just wanted to—”

When his voice began to falter, Shiro stepped forward and let Keith press his head to Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro’s arms went around his shoulders. When the rain pattered against the concrete, it created a mist, and every now and then they felt it weighing on their clothes but didn’t stop them from standing by the rain for another ten minutes.

  


  


“Could we listen to something other than… the 1920s?” Lance asked, wincing as he did so because he wondered if there even _was_ anything newer than this on Grandma’s record player. Of course, she did have bluetooth speakers, he could just plug in his phone, but it didn’t seem to have the same vibe that vinyls gave off.

“[This](https://youtu.be/xGV3MGGIYyo) is the sixties, Lance, get your facts straight,” Grandma Allura said, and for a sixty year old, she was far more graceful than Lance or any one of his siblings. She wasn’t dancing, per se, but she was moving about the room rearranging books with a little sway to her step. Lance propped his legs up against the armrest of his chair and listened to the soft jazz migrating through the record player.

His grandma began to hum, and rotated her hands in such a way that as they stilled, it was a gentle invitation for Lance to join her. She raised her eyebrows at him, and after a moment, he relented. 

“It reminds me of _Sleeping Beauty_ ,” he confessed, letting Grandma Allura take him by the hands and spin him around. They settled into a slow waltz.

“Sounds like a dream…” she mused aloud, and Lance realized that was exactly what it sounded like. “ _I felt a bump and then a… ‘oh beg your pardon’. Suddenly I saw… polka dots and moonbeams… all around a pug-nosed dream_ ,” she sang, and it reminded Lance of when he was a kid visiting grandma’s house. They’d watch Disney movies until bedtime—no later than nine—and Grandma Allura would sing to him. She used to play the guitar. She had a talent for the ukulele as well.

“Do you think,” Lance started, “we could _watch_ _Sleeping Beauty_? Do you still have it?”

She hummed thoughtfully before coming to the conclusion, “Perhaps.” Just then a knock sounded on the sitting room door, and they paused for a brief second to see that Haggar had entered. She smiled at them, raising up two glasses of lemonade. “Why don’t you go look in the hutch? All the movies are in there, in the living room.”

“Okay.” Lance stepped back from Allura, and after claiming his lemonade from Haggar’s hand, he headed towards the door. Before leaving, he looked back at where Haggar commented something, and Grandma laughed. Haggar set down the lemonade in her hand and accepted Grandma Allura’s invitation. The two of them began waltzing, and Lance slipped out of the room.

He wandered towards the living room, and on the way there passed the patio to the back deck. There, he found Rover relaxing with her head resting against her paws, and the bones of her hips prominent. She was just barely in the mist of the rain, so Lance opened up the door and called her inside. 

Rover nudged her way past Lance’s legs as he stood staring out at the curtain of rain. Water dribbled from the rooftop, soaking the wood on the steps leading down to the yard. It seemed… impossible that just earlier that morning Lance _spoke_ to the small human named Keith. He wondered if Keith was all right in the rain. Did it flood underneath the house when the weather was like this? 

He knew he was sugar-coating the conversation he had with Keith, and thinking about it made him frown. It may have been productive, getting Keith’s attention, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Keith most likely hated him. But why would Lance care? It wasn’t like he had some ridiculous preconceived notion that they could be _friends_ —

…Right?

_Dammit_ , he hissed to himself, shutting the patio door. He imagined that it would only get worse, spending months here with only Grandma Allura and Haggar as company. And here he had to go and burn bridges when the bridge wasn’t even built yet. He burned all the materials necessary to build such a bridge the second he caught Keith against his will.

That just sounded awful. It sounded worse and worse every time he thought about it. If Lance was a small human being, he wouldn’t want to be picked up either.

With a groan, Lance entered the living room where the hutch was. He pressed both palms to his eyes before dropping them, and dropping down onto his knees. Begrudgingly, he opened the cabinet doors and began sifting through Grandma Allura’s VHS collection. 

In the far back corner of the hutch there was a collection of the classic Disney movies, and after juggling between his childhood favorite, _The Little Mermaid_ , he reminded himself what he was here for. _Sleeping Beauty_ , right. 

Contrary to what the vast collection of VHS tapes said, Grandma Allura’s home theatre was definitely an upgrade. And contrary to what _that_ said about his grandma, she knew very little about how to function it. Lance went about getting the movie set up, rewinding the tape, so that Grandma wouldn’t have to bother with it. She took a seat in her floral-printed armchair and Lance lounged on the couch as the movie started.

It took very little time for Pidge’s sensitive ears to pick up on the sound humming from the floorboards over their heads. She hurried out of the workshop, tearing off her goggles, and lunging into Hunk’s room with her arms splayed. She latched onto him, exclaiming, “Movie time! Movie time!”

“Good Lord!” he laughed, plucking her off his back. “Grab the blankets, I’ll get the food.”

As they dispersed, Hunk knocked on Shiro’s door, and then Keith’s. When they peered out their rooms, Hunk hollered, “They’re watching a movie!”

“Ooh, I haven’t seen a movie in forever,” Shiro said, grinning as Keith turned to him with a deadpan stare. “What?”

“Ever since Pidge, Hunk, and I camped out in a movie theatre they’ve been obsessed with them,” Keith complained. “Literally _every time_ Allura turns on the television—”

“Yes, but are you _really_ willing to complain about this when we’re clearly missing the start of the movie now?” Shiro said, grinning cheekily as he passed by Keith and caught up with Hunk. 

Keith sneered a little before sticking his tongue out at Shiro’s back before returning to his room to grab his shoes. He yanked on his boots and laced them before heading out and nearly ramming straight into Pidge, whose vision was obscured by a mound of blankets. He grabbed one from the top and folded it over his arm, allowing her a larger field of vision.

“Oh, hey Keith,” she said. “Movie time.”

“Movie time,” he repeated, cringing a little. She didn’t sound at all pleased that he heard about the movie. It’d be hard to avoid hearing about it, especially when Hunk went and roped the whole family together.

To dissolve the awkwardness, Keith stuck his tongue out at her. She scowled back and poked her tongue out at him before continuing onwards. 

The four of them scrambled out the door and towards the nail-studded ladder that would take them to the kitchen. Hunk swung the lamp forward, checking both ways within the wall and listening for rats. When the coast was deemed clear, he waved them along, down across the first floor of Allura’s house.

They navigated the walls expertly, and with honed instincts telling them when and where to dodge spider webs and leap over holes on the wood. Eventually they came to a vertical nail ladder, which Shiro took the lead in ascending. It would take them to the approximate location of a china display shelf in the living room.

Out in the open, they gathered silently and laid out their blankets in the shade of a china piece propped up against a stand. The shelf was encased in glass, so there wasn’t a fear of falling over the edge. Hunk dispersed the snacks, and Keith accepted a bit of the cracker Pidge took the night before. Even crushed in her backpack, it still served as an excellent snack.

Throughout the duration of the movie, Keith found himself slowly leaning against Shiro—or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps Shiro was gradually trusting his weight against Keith’s shoulder, but either way they fell in line, as Pidge slumped with her feet over Shiro’s lap, and back against Hunk’s arm. Though he had never seen _Sleeping Beauty_ before, Keith found himself uninterested in the film when there were humans just a few feet below them.

Allura was in her usual lounge chair, sipping on lemonade. From this room they could see Haggar in the kitchen, cleaning the dishes. But Keith focused on Lance, who, from this angle, couldn’t be seen very well. The back of the couch covered most of his face, but one of his legs was propped up on the back couch cushion. His foot idly swayed to and fro whenever a musical number played in the movie.

Keith pressed his head back against the wall and glanced out of the corner of his eye at Shiro. The man’s attention was focused on the television screen. The speakers on the ground beneath them vibrated against the wall at their backs. It sent chills down Keith’s spine and they settled in the pit of his stomach. Truthfully, he loved that sensation of a sound so loud that it reverberated inside of him.

At one point Haggar stepped into the room and took a seat at the other lounge chair. Their small group took in a collective breath and held it until her head was turned completely away from them, trained on the television. Keith released his captured breath.

He felt Shiro lean closer, as if to say something, but Keith interrupted him: “Why are the classical Disney princesses so dumb?”

Startled, Shiro laughed a little and said, “What?”

“They’re infuriating. Why don’t they realize how idiotic their decisions are? Oh, let me just jab my finger into a needle,” Keith whispered sarcastically.

“Reminds me of someone,” Shiro chuckled, and Keith elbowed him in the rib for it. “Kidding! Kidding.”

“You totally just called me a Disney princess. You aren’t forgiven.”

“Aw, come on.”

“No,” Keith turned away so Shiro wouldn’t see the grin on his face. When he glanced out of the corner of his eye, he found Shiro still smiling at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, and after one last skeptical glance, Keith returned his attention to the screen. A moment later, his eyes widened a fraction at the touch of Shiro’s arm coming around his shoulders. He relaxed and after several minutes, worked up the courage to tip his head slightly, just enough to lean it against Shiro’s shoulder.

After the movie was done and the credits started rolling, they rounded up their blankets and crumbs. In the midst of cleaning up, they heard someone stand up and say, “Hang on, I’m gonna go get something.”

“All right. I’ll be right here,” Allura said, linking her hands together over her stomach. Keith glanced over at them just as Lance disappeared out the room, and returned with a flat black disk. “And where are you going to play that?”

“Grandpa showed me how the coffee table works,” Lance said, grinning devilishly at Allura.

“Fair enough. It’s valuable now, be careful.”

Keith watched from behind the glass as Lance unhooked the tabletop surface of the coffee table and bolstered it at an angle. Underneath was…

“What is that thing?” Keith asked quietly, pointing to it. 

“Record player,” Shiro answered, and instantly Pidge was up close to the glass, her hands on it.

“Really? I never even knew that was there,” she whispered. “There’s one in the sitting room…”

The speakers blipped, and a second later the crisp crackle of music came into focus. Keith couldn’t quite pick out the instrument—but it certainly sounded like jazz. 

The beat swayed into a gentle lull that sent Hunk swinging his hips back and forth, his feet crossing to and fro in the shape of a square. He grabbed Keith by the hand and spun him in, and soon he was stuck dancing with Hunk to the music. Each time he circled around, facing the glass, he saw Lance taking Allura by the hand and letting her guide him about.

And then she was singing, “ _[A](https://youtu.be/xGV3MGGIYyo?t=1m40s) country dance was being held… in a garden…_ ” and Hunk spun Keith over to Pidge. She staggered into the steps, and for someone who was so spontaneously adept with their footing seemed to be… less graceful when it was synchronized. 

_The music started… it was I, the perplexed one… I held my breath and said—‘may I have the next one?’_

Keith twirled Pidge around, and passed her on to Hunk, who transferred Shiro over. The music was slowing, but for several seconds Keith pressed his head to Shiro’s shoulder and stepped lazily to and fro as Hunk and Pidge went haywire with rapid swirls and twirls and spins. Hunk clasped his hand over his mouth to avoid laughing loud, and Keith smiled listlessly at them. 

At least, until Pidge bonked her head on the edge of a china plate.

The stand skidded over the wood, and a bit of the porcelain _tink_ ed against the glass case. Every one of them froze, and before any one of them could say, “It wasn’t even that loud,” they heard someone stand. The only person sitting had been Haggar.

“There!” she shouted, and Keith stumbled away from Shiro, looking down at the finger Haggar poised at them. Lance and Allura just barely turned around, but Keith, Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk were already escaping Haggar’s wrath. 

“I saw them! They were _right there!_ ” Haggar yelled, running for a chair and standing atop it to undo the glass door to the case. Grandma went to stand beside her as she pulled apart the china stands, practically dropping them if Grandma wasn’t there to grab them and set them aside.

“They probably just shifted a little. I’d be surprised if they never moved—they’ve been up there for decades,” Grandma said. “Even plates need to shimmy around a little if they go unused. Why do you suppose they fall out the cabinet when you open them?”

Lance came up just in time to catch a crystal stand. A second later Haggar craned her chin up and reached a hand gingerly onto the shelf. She came back with a small… crumb.

“Then tell me what a cracker bit is doing in here?” she said, turning to Grandma with a scowl. “They were here.”

Grandma stared at her, her mouth slightly ajar. After a moment, she shut her jaw and said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Haggar. Why don’t you put the plates back. We’ll go out to eat tonight, how does that sound?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No joke I've been listening to _Polka Dots and Moonbeams_ by Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra ON REPEAT for DAYS now. I'm not even kidding you. I never even LISTENED to jazz before this. [This](http://chillanimebeats.com/post/154013664351/%E3%83%81%E3%83%AB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A1%E3%83%93%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88-chillanimebeats-%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A6%E3%83%89-soundcloud) is what did it for me. This is it.
> 
> I still freak out when I meet people who are younger than me who _don't know what VHS is_. Am I REALLY THAT OLD NOW?!


	6. Foreboding

They burst through the front door of the brick house laughing hysterically. Keith didn’t know where it started—it probably had something to do with the fact that Hunk tripped on the last two nails of the ladder underneath the house. Either way, Pidge collapsed over the kitchen table howling with laughter. “Th-That was so much fun!” she said, falling into a chair with a giddy smile on her face.

“Messing with Haggar is both a terrifying and thrilling experience,” Hunk added, dropping down into a chair and smiling over at Shiro and Keith. 

“I think it’s more terrifying than thrilling,” Shiro confessed.

“But now that we’re _leaving_ ,” Pidge said, sobering a little. “It _makes sense_. It’s not like we’ll see them again.”

“Wow, glad you’re realizing this _now_ , precisely half a day after you _yelled at me for basically the exact same thing_ ,” Keith complained. “Hypocrite.”

“Terrorizing Haggar does not classify as making friends with the humans, which was what you were doing,” she countered.

“Was not! Did you not hear a single thing I said about my encounter with the kid? I _threw_ a goddamn _button_ at his head.” When Pidge didn’t react to this, Keith turned to Shiro with his hands out, as if to say, _Deal with her!_

“Whatever the case, you shouldn’t poke at _Haggar’s_ buttons,” Shiro said, looking pointedly at all three of them before adding, “In case you don’t remember the last time.”

Pidge sulked in her chair, pursing her lips as she turned to Hunk. The big man shrugged, and said, “I’d rather not be killed so close to our official leaving date. Which is… when, exactly?”

“The transport won’t be done for at _least_ another week,” Pidge said. “And that’s only if you help me out, Hunk. You promised you would…”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” he hummed, and slapped his hand on the table. “But it’s too late to work on it now. I say we eat dinner and call it a night. I haven’t gotten that much exercise in at _least_ a few weeks, give or take.”

Shiro hummed in agreement, and by default, Pidge relented as well. Keith’s stomach reminded him of the snacks he had during the movie—it was enough to fill up his small appetite for the night, so he declined the offer. “I’m probably going to sleep now. See you guys in the morning,” he said, waving farewell as he headed for the kitchen door.

Contrary to what he said, Keith didn’t sleep straight away. He collapsed onto his bed after undressing down to his boxers. The air was muggy from the rain and, regardless of the nightly chill the rain brought, the temperature was an obnoxious, unbalanced level between hot and cold. He stared at his ceiling for ages. There was a leaf strung up there like a canopy over his head. 

After spending a while tracing the veins of the leaf, he fell asleep to the sound of Hunk and Shiro laughing down the hall, or the distant tinkering of metal against metal down in the workshop. The hiss of fire being extinguished in a bucket of water. The sound of dishes being put to rest in the sink.

The sound of footsteps overhead, leaving out the door for dinner.

  


  


“I always loved coming here,” Grandma said, clasping her hands together as the three of them—Grandma Allura, Haggar, and Lance—sat together in a booth flanked on one side by a dim window. The streetlamps seemed muted because of it, and whenever cars passed, their headlights caught Lance’s attention. He always did have a habit of getting distracted.

The restaurant itself wasn’t particularly… formal. It seemed like a family restaurant, and one that served excellent fish fries at that. Lance couldn’t remember the last time he had such an excellent fish before, but even his stomach had limits. They walked away with a large to-go box and full stomachs. 

It was just a little past eight at night when they left, and there was still a bit of light left in the sky. Haggar stood at the sidewalk as Lance and his grandma started towards the car. “Are you coming, Haggar?” Grandma Allura called behind her. Lance had his arm around his grandma’s, and he could smell her simple perfume. It reminded him of freshly cleaned bedsheets.

“I was just thinking—I have to run a quick errand. The bookstore is open for another forty minutes, though. I could meet up with you two there, if that’s all right with you?” she said, pointing across the street. Lance found himself noticing the fact that her fingers were lean and tall, and several were touched by the shimmer of a few rings. He supposed it had something to do with the yellowish streetlamp overhead that drew his attention to her hands.

He missed the final verdict, but caught on as Grandma Allura tugged him in the direction of the bookstore. He glanced over his shoulder where Haggar was crossing the street, an opposing angle from them, and disappeared around the corner of the road. 

Lance almost dragged his grandma to a halt in the middle of the road to get a closer look at a sign he caught sight of—in the direction of Haggar’s mission.

Just as he was about to bring it up, Grandma said, “I heard there’s a new Harry Potter book out…”

“Don’t read it, it’s a trick,” he said automatically.

She was grinning ahead, but he knew better than to pass it off as anything but a smirk. He narrowed his eyes at her and glanced back to see the sign again. It was out of view, but he swore it had something to do with exterminator…

That pretty much set the mood for the trip to the bookstore. He walked Grandma Allura around the isles, constantly wondering if he was just imagining things. Sure, Haggar seemed pretty paranoid about the “infestation”, but he hardly pegged her as the sort to hire an _exterminator_ … Nor did he peg his _Grandma_ as viewing it as a problem. She hardly even seemed to believe that the plates shifting in the living room was entirely devised by small humans living in the walls. 

Speaking of…

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t seem to shut off his brain for a second—he hardly believed that he even fell back asleep after _manhandling_ Keith in the dead of the night which sounds _entirely wrong_ and _completely ridiculous_ but that… was exactly what happened? Was that weird? _Of course not. Keith is, like, three inches tall_ , Lance rationalized, pushing a hand against the side of his face.

His brain really needed to stop using the word ‘manhandling’ in the same sentence as ‘Keith’, that was for sure.

“Something on your mind?” his grandma asked, her attention seeming to be tuned in on the book in her hand. Lance stared down at it. Her skin was dark against its white surface. “You seem tense.”

“I’m just… wondering where Haggar’s going,” he admitted.

“I am sure it’s not a problem,” she said, slipping the book back on the shelf and moving down the isle a tad. “If it is, I’ll take care of it. You’re just like your mother.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“It isn’t hard to tell, Lance. Sorry if that disappoints you,” she chuckled, and leaned in a tad to add, “Haggar has always been suspicious of the mice in our house.”

Lance studied her closely, and wondered if she was just using ‘mice’ because they were in public, or because she truly believed they were just mice. After a minute of constant noise inside his brain, he settled not not bringing it up and instead said, “You mean paranoid?”

“Euphemisms, Lance, euphemisms!” she hooted, throwing her head back and laughing. “But yes, I’d say that. You were probably too young to notice it back in the day.”

Lance frowned at her, and from the corner of his eye he saw someone approach the bookstore door. The bell chimed, and Haggar stepped in, with her modest red dress and braided white hair. She smiled at them and waved. Lance muttered, “There she is.”

“Be nice. Don’t be so judgmental,” his grandma scolded, and it was one of the _real_ scoldings that made Lance’s stomach fester with guilt for the entire car ride back. It consumed his thoughts until they actually arrived back at the house, and he recalled what he was _actually_ supposed to be thinking about.

 _Keith_.

Regardless of the fact that his eyes could barely stay open, Lance went to his room “for the night” and remained awake until he heard Haggar’s bedroom door close. She was always the last to go to sleep, mainly due to the fact that after ensuring Grandma was well in her bed, Haggar had an extensive nightly routine. Lance only knew about it because he timed her, and then groaned in annoyance when she went to the first floor of the house and meandered around a bit in the kitchen—probably tidying up since she hadn’t done so after dinner. Usually directly after cooking a meal, Haggar would clean all the dishes from that day, but with the spontaneous eating-out experience, the dishes were still there.

So Lance waited. And when he was finally able to emerge from his room, it was to the dark of a sleeping house. He peered down the hallway—on his left was the window at the end of the hall, accompanied by a cushioned bench and decorative pillows. He turned away from it and, feet padded by socks, quietly made his way to the stairs.

He kept to the sides of the hallway, simply to avoid the creaking floorboards. The stairs were tricky, and he took so long going down and holding his breath that he landed on the first floor panting. _That wasn’t so bad_ , he thought, clutching his chest and looking back up the way he came.

Lance meandered to the living room, and with the light of the moon coming in through the windows, he grabbed a wooden chair and propped it underneath the china shelf. He opened it as Haggar did, and gingerly plucked through each of the plates. He would press his fingers against the wall, looking for the secret entrance like he found in his own room. 

The wallpaper here was patterned as well, contained within vertical stripes. He squinted as he felt a bit of the pattern give, and he pushed on it a bit harder. 

The cutout fell in, but this time it didn’t land directly in front of him like before. Without a surface to fall on, it collapsed downward, and he cringed as it created a hollow ring at the bottom of the wall. 

_That was_ way _too loud_ , he thought, wincing as he strained to hear something else—the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall from upstairs.

Lance scrambled off his chair after closing the china shelf. He put the chair back and ran to the living room door, disappearing behind its constantly propped-open entrance. Just as he fell back into the shadows, the footsteps from the stairs landed, and hurried through the sitting room, out the other side into the kitchen, then the living room. 

Lance tugged his hands against his chest, calming his breath. The worst Haggar could do was send him back to his room. She wouldn’t do anything to him. If he hadn’t hid, he could have played it off as him getting water. But now…

If she found him, it would just confirm that he agreed with her. There _were_ small people in the house. 

If she was willing to hire the exterminator under a hunch, _knowing_ for certain would definitely solidify that idea in her mind.

Haggar remained out of view until he saw her pass the crack in the door where it connected to its hinges. She disappeared up the stairs, but not without pausing and taking one last sweep of the floor with her eyes. Lance released his breath as soon as he heard her bedroom door shut.

He stepped out from behind the door and slumped, looking up at the china shelf again. He wished he could just gut the wall and follow Keith’s tracks. Did they know what Haggar was doing?

 _Keith, where are you_?

One thing Lance knew well enough was the fact that Keith lived beneath the house, but what he wondered was how Keith was able to get _in_ the house? At what point did the walls open up for the small humans?

Not far from the living room, and just to the right of the patio door there was a small hole within the floorboards, between the drywall. It would be almost impossible for a human of Lance’s size to discover it without the help of a chainsaw to cut through the walls. 

But there are other ways for a human to get underneath the house.

  


  


At some point in the night, Keith groaned awake and dropped his arm onto something—or rather some _one_ —warm and asleep. For a second he lurched at the idea Pidge coming to his room after having another one of her nightmares, but given the state of things, she’d be more likely to seek comfort with Hunk.

He relaxed a little as he confirmed that it wasn’t, in fact, Pidge. 

He nudged his arm against Shiro’s side until he roused him. “How long have you been in here?” Keith asked, voice groggy from sleep.

Shiro squinted at him, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “After Hunk went to bed.” Keith let his head fall back into place, staring at the last place he remembered looking at before falling asleep—the leaf. It was too dark to see the veins now.

Keith remained awake for several more minutes in silence. He had his hands laid flat over his stomach, and he could feel the ridges of his hip bones whenever he exhaled. Eventually he started to hear something faint… almost undetectable overhead. It was the sort of sound he searched for when looking for footsteps.

“Someone’s awake,” he murmured.

“Yeah, I heard it too,” Shiro said. “Haggar?”

“No, she doesn’t stay up past nine…” Keith said, and sat up a little to look across the room. In the far corner of his room there was a watch leant against the wall, but in the dark he couldn’t see it quite right. It felt later than nine, though.

Keith shifted, as if to get up from the bed, but Shiro tugged on his arm to hold him back. “I’m sure it’s fine, Keith,” he whispered. “Don’t worry about it.”

Keith stared down at Shiro, and then again at the watch across the room. Slowly, he lowered himself back down, and turned on his side so he could watch the clock, and listen for the footsteps trying so terribly to be quiet up above. After this week, they’d be off into the wilderness, and he wouldn’t be worrying about Haggar, but he would miss Allura. He would miss the house that provided for them. He’d miss this room, and this bed. He wove the frame himself, and the blankets that he tugged up to his chin. They smelled like home.

He closed his eyes and sighed through his nostrils, his brows most likely crinkled together above the bridge of his nose. 

Suddenly something seemed to… loosen overhead. The second it did, he thought he was hearing things, until Shiro bolted up from the bed. He swung his feet off the side and ran to the door, and Keith followed after him.

The entered the hallway just as Hunk’s door opened, yawning, “What’s going on?” 

Pidge hurried in from up the stairs, looking towards the ceiling before dodging her way between them. She was heading towards the kitchen, and she barely opened the door before a breeze of wind pushed through the ceiling. 

A shriek escaped her as she yanked the kitchen door closed and looked back at them, horrified. “S-Someone took the roof.”

“You’re kidding,” Hunk whined. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

Shiro pulled Pidge back and went to investigate. Keith entered the kitchen after him, only to skid to a halt at the sight of something… crisp and white and creased in the middle being placed on the kitchen floor. It was a note—certainly larger than the first one Keith read, but definitely with the same handwriting. 

Shiro had an arm held out, blocking Keith back near the wall as they looked up to the hand retracting from the note. The light from overhead was faint, and barely registered Allura’s grandson holding a finger to his lip. Quiet.

And then he put the roof back into place, and pitched them into darkness again.

It was silent for a solid two minutes before one of them finally found a voice to speak. It was Shiro, stretching a hand out towards the door. “P-Pidge, you got a light?”

She let out a squeaky sound that sounded on the verge of, “Mhmm.” She stepped into the room, looking up wearily at the ceiling before fumbling for a flashlight in one of the cabinets. She lit it and handed it to Shiro, who aimed it towards the note. 

_Sorry to disturb you, but I think Haggar is hiring an exterminator -Lance_

“How many days until you said you can finish the transportation?” Shiro asked, his voice low so as to avoid the shaky sensation they were all feeling. Keith couldn’t stop staring at Lance’s handwriting illustrating _exterminator_.

“At least five days. The…uh, the engine still needs a lot of work,” she stammered.

“Do you think he’s telling the truth though?” Hunk said, causing them all to look towards the kitchen threshold. He held his hands in front of him, shaking. “You—You don’t _really_ think Allura’s going to let an _exterminator_ take us out just like that?”

“Allura doesn’t even think we exist,” Pidge said. “If Haggar is able to convince her there’s rats— _which_ there are, you all know that as well as I do—then of course she’s gonna want to get rid of them. Rats are disgusting and unhygienic.”

“We aren’t disgusting and—”

“I’m talking about the _rats_ , Hunk,” she exclaimed. “If they find rats, then they basically find us, too. We might even be easier to find, too.”

“They won’t find us,” Keith said.

“Yeah, well, your boyfriend did so are you _really_ going to say _professionals_ can’t?” Pidge said, and Keith rolled his eyes, folding his arms over his chest. He gave her a dull look as she dropped her fists to her sides. “This doesn’t change the fact that we need two more bottle caps. I’m going to go work on the engine. It damn well doesn’t help that I have to make all my parts from _scratch_.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Hunk complained, but Pidge was already storming past him. “Pidge, come on! Don’t make me tie you to the bed so you can sleep!”

“That sounds kinky, and _no_. I won’t let you!”

Keith was still staring at the letter when Shiro shook him back into focus with an arm on his shoulder. “We’ll get the bottle caps tomorrow night, okay? Get some sleep,” Shiro said.

 _Yeah, as if I can sleep after this_ , he thought miserably. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao I accidentally posted the wrong chapter but THIS IS THE RIGHT ONE. Gosh I'm just so all over the place recently XD


	7. Empathy Problems

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little flashback in the middle of the chapter, and it transitions from dialogue to narrative gradually. There's some gore with the flashback, just as a little warning.

The overcast faded after the two days since Shiro arrived, which meant they could go outside without worrying about drowning in a puddle of mud and water. Hunk accompanied Pidge in search of supplies in Allura’s garden shed, and Keith grudgingly helped Shiro sort through which kitchen supplies they would take with them on the journey. After knowing the size of the supplies, they used what was left of their previous run for tissues and started stitching a bag to hold them all. There wasn’t much—which explained why they attempted to get some earlier.

But stitching a bag didn’t take all day, and eventually Shiro let Keith off the hook. “Don’t wander far,” he warned.

“Whatever, _mom_ ,” Keith snickered, sticking his tongue out only to receive a playful poke in the side for it. He shoved Shiro back, laughing a little as he snatched up his boots and tugged them on. “What are you gonna do?”

Shiro leaned back in his chair and gave a soft shrug. “Wait for you to get back, I guess.”

“Cheesy,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “You should find something better to do with your time.”

“You want me to come with you then?” Shiro suggested, and his eyebrow arched.

“No,” he said, almost a bit too quickly. “I just… like going out by myself.” And that wasn’t so farfetched for Keith, and he was thankful Shiro didn’t dispute it.

Keith exited the house, and after shutting the door, he leaned back against it with a sigh. He couldn’t peg it as relieved, either. It was a strange, naturally giddy he recalled getting often, especially when no one was around. He mistakingly assumed it was the excitement of getting time alone, but that wasn’t the case.

Keith jumped from the bricks and jogged to the air vent. He scaled the wall, slipped through the bars, and swung down a blade of grass to the ground. The properly combed and trimmed grass just barely reached his same height, but as he crossed through the entire yard, it grew near the edges of the river. He hopped down from the smooth, neatly placed rocks along the edge and observed the water. The pebbles under the crystal clear surface were multicolored from orange to black, to pale, pale grey.

He sat for a while on the rock before reclining back on it with his arms spread, open to the warm, sunny air shining white underneath his eyelids. He stayed like that until he heard the distant sound of the door opening, and Rover coming out into the yard. Keith scowled at the sky, but didn’t move, even when he heard her heavy breath passing over the arched bridge passing across the river, to the meadow on the other side. It was the meadow where Hunk liked to pluck wildflowers like violets or pansies.

Keith sat up a little when he recognized footsteps— _human_ footsteps—padding across the bridge. He looked up in time to see Lance glancing down at the river on his way to the meadow, a book nestled in his hand. Keith shrunk back a little, so one of the arching grasses could cover him, but Lance couldn’t see him, not from this far away. 

He was given full permission just simply… observe.

Lance was wearing a simple quarter-length sleeved shirt, grayish-blue in color and lazy sweatpants below. There was a checkered blanket draped over his other arm. He was barefoot, stepping through the meadow as Rover ran circles around him. He laughed and shooed her away as he found a decent spot to relax. He spread out the blanket, and before he could even sit on it, Rover claimed half of it. 

Keith jumped from his rock and ran for the bridge. Once across, he navigated the wilds of the meadow, using the safety-pin on his jacket to shoo away the larger bugs here and there. Their antennae would perk up at him, and wave around, scenting him until he waved the shiny, sharp tip of his pin at them. It was as if they knew what skewering was.

Soon Keith found the smooth, flat rock Lance claimed as a suitable pillow. Keith climbed up on it, careful as he watched Lance’s shortly-trimmed brown hair shift. He turned on his side, propping up on an arm. For a second, Keith debated abandoning the mission. 

Lance didn’t turn to him, but said, “Can I look at you?”

Keith didn’t answer. His silence caused Lance to look anyway. It was all Keith could do to keep from lunging off the rock and running back home. It felt strange being out in broad daylight. The exact reason they ever scavenged at night was to avoid the humans. And yet, now Keith was staring directly at one in the middle of the goddamn day.

“Look at you!” Lance squealed, lowering back down to rest his chin on his arm. “You’re, like, three inches tall.”

“It’s more like two and three quarters,” Keith replied, glaring at him. “What’s this about an exterminator? Do you know anything else about it?”

“Wait—hang on,” he interrupted, lifting a hand off of Rover. He folded up his index finger, and used his middle knuckle to count Keith’s height. “Nah, you’re pretty close to three. How’d you get over here?”

“Walked.”

“And the pin?”

“To stab your hand if you— _no_ , stop measuring me,” Keith complained, jabbing the pin in the direction of Lance’s hand. The boy had the audacity to laugh, and it infuriated Keith. “If you’re just gonna laugh at me—”

Instantly Lance shut up. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you or anything,” he said, pursing his lips as he glanced away from Keith for a split second before seeming to remember that he didn’t get to see small people every day… so he looked right back. “Who are your friends?” he asked.

“I’ll talk after you explain that… _nuclear bomb_ you dropped on us last night. Clearly you have some idea of what an exterminator means to us, so I want you to explain it,” he demanded.

Lance let out a sigh, reaching back to scratch at his hair just as Rover shook her short ears out and got up a little to sniff at Keith. He scrambled away from the dog, only to shriek and fall off the rock. A throaty growl emitted from Rover’s chest, and before she could lunge at Keith, Lance grabbed her by the collar and dragged her back. “Calm down, Rover. He’s a friend,” Lance said, restraining the dog when she continue to growl as Keith recovered from the fall.

He climbed back onto the rock with a huff, his grip tight on his safety-pin.

“I… hm, well…” Lance started. “Yesterday after dinner Haggar went to run an errand—and all I know is that she was heading towards the pest control place, downtown. She mentioned it briefly this morning, but my grandma isn’t… _entertaining_ the idea. I can’t tell if she knows about you guys, or if she just doesn’t want strange men poking around her house. She doesn’t have many visitors because of that. My mom says she’s always been skeptical of strangers.”

Keith agreed with him there. From what he knew about Allura, she was comfortable living on her own. Her neighbors came by every now and then, and they were nice enough. She enjoyed entertaining guests she was familiar with. 

Lance shrugged his shoulders and said, “But… if Haggar _does_ get an exterminator…”

“We just need five days,” Keith said, glancing back at the house and thinking about all the supplies he and Shiro were just putting together. The contraption Pidge was making. “Hopefully,” he added.

“What happens in five days?” Lance asked, and his hands hesitated over Rover’s scruffy mane. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

Keith scowled at the rock then, where it met the checkered pattern of Lance’s blanket. He twisted the slim metal cap of the safety-pin. “Yeah. Shiro—our friend—found a place with other people like us. We’ll be traveling there.”

“There’s more of you?” Lance said, startled. “How many?”

Keith scoffed. “That’s kind of an impossible question to answer. The world may be huge to you, but it’s infinite to us,” he said, drawing his arms wide. “And a lot of us are hard to find because we hide away, to avoid being _killed_ or whatever. I… used to travel around a lot, so I’ve met quite a few.”

“And how far is travel for you?” he asked, a cheeky smile on his lips. Keith gave him an unamused stare. “Fine, fine. I’m just kidding. I thought it was crazy that you’re even here, but the idea that you aren’t the only one is…”

“Kind of a let down. I’m not exactly ‘special’, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Keith said, aiding air quotes and eliciting a laugh from Lance.

“Exactly,” he said, and lowered himself back down now that Rover was at bay. “So your friends. Tell me about them.”

Startled, Keith blankly looked at him until he rose his eyebrows to insist Keith talk. “Um… what do you want to know?”

“It’d be nice to know their _names_ , for one,” Lance said, and after a moment added, “But that was you, up on the china shelf, right? With your friends?”

Keith swallowed harshly, a bit guilty for being caught, as he always was. “Yeah, it was. Whenever Allura plays movies we always come to watch,” he explained. “Pidge and Hunk especially. We used to live in a movie theatre, and when they dimmed the lights there was a top railing we would sit on, in the center. When it was dark, no one could see us because the projector light made it hard for people to see anything underneath it.”

“That’s every kid’s dream—to live in a movie theatre,” he said with a laugh. “Why’d you leave?”

“The food wasn’t easy to get to,” Keith confessed, scratching the back of his neck. “They lock it up pretty tight, and we couldn’t live off boxed candy and pretzel bites anyway. Soda was always fun to get, though.”

Lance smiled in an almost… fond manner that caused Keith to look away and wonder why his entire body felt like it was on fire. “And then we met Shiro,” he said, clearing his throat.

“Shiro?”

“He’s… well, he travels around a lot. He’s been to a _lot_ of different camps and is good at finding them. Shiro actually found the place we’ll be moving to, which is why he’s hanging around here. The last time he was here was… about three months ago, give or take,” Keith explained, and after a moment, hesitantly took a seat on the warm rock with his feet tucked in close.

“What about Pidge and Hunk?”

“What about them?”

“How’d you meet them?” he asked.

Keith cleared his throat again, rubbing a hand across the side of his face as he thought for a moment. “Well… Hunk never had a family. I met him when I was really young—something like four years old. I used to live in a camp of about twelve, which is pretty big, but it makes it hard to stay hidden. I won’t get into the details but I lost my parents, and the surviving adults at the camp took me in until they dropped me off at Hunk’s little town.”

“I’m sorry,” Lance apologized, tilting his head against his arm. “About your parents.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said. “I don’t really remember them very well. And Hunk took care of me—he’s a year older than me, anyway. He always liked taking care of the kids in his town before Pidge showed up. She experienced a similar situation, but her entire family just sort of… vanished. No one really knew what happened to them. They didn’t even live with other people like us. It was a miracle anyone even found Pidge and knew where to bring her.”

“Does that happen a lot? Kids losing their parents?” Lance asked, and Keith nodded. He frowned, a tremendously sad expression causing his eyebrows scrunch together. “I’m surprised you all live as long as you have. Sometimes I think about… video games, you know? And how when you die you just get another life. And if life was a video game, we’ve all basically survived seventeen years of it—seventeen for me, anyway.”

“That’s insane. I’m seventeen,” Keith said, laughing. “At least I think I am. Again, I might have been four or three, the people who took me to Hunk’s little town didn’t really know.”

They were quiet for a while, and after approximately two minutes Keith realized that the entire time they were staring at each other. If Keith got incredibly close to Lance, it would be so easy to see the threads of blue in his irises, to the blackhole they all tumbled into at the center. He swiftly turned red and looked away, which prompted Lance to finally speak.

“Wait—so you probably had it good at that place? The place where Hunk lived, I mean,” he said. “What brought you here?”

“Pidge wanted to find her parents,” Keith said, rubbing his arm and refusing to stare at Lance again. _Bad idea, bad idea_. “And she planned on running away to find them, but we stopped her about a day before… well, here’s the thing—”

There were two things that sucked about being small, and Keith, Hunk, and Pidge realized this after the day they left. The first being staying undetected. There were horror stories that went around the small community that led to small people being swept up by humans and taken away, never to be heard of again. Exterminators taking out entire communities. Their bodies, never seen again. 

The second: rats.

Mice were fine, they could tolerate mice. Mice had milder temperaments. But rats? They multiplied like that was all they did for a living. Unbeknownst to the small community living in the house in the attic of human’s home, a family of rats began to fest on the far side of the attic. The attic was approximately the entire length of the house—they rarely ventured to the other side of the attic when all their transportation was near the house. The ladder leading down to the second and first floor of the human’s home was no more than five paces out the small front door. They didn’t need to traverse the planks over neon yellow insulation.

The population of rats multiplied, and their first sighting was a young rat. One of their caretakers, Rollo was his name, came back to the house looking as though he just bathed in red wine. At the time Keith was old enough to know what it actually was, and nearly threw up at the sight. He smelled awful, and his wife had to stitch the massive bite mark on his wrist. 

“You’re lucky it didn’t take your goddamn hand,” Nyma had said as she jabbed the needle through his skin and pinched the edges of the wound together. 

Keith sat on Rollo’s other side as the man lifted a mug of alcohol to his lips and took a huge swig before setting it down with a hiss. “Careful,” he complained.

“Why didn’t you wait for the others to help you take care of it?” Nyma said. 

“I got them to take the body away. Don’t need you little guys seein’ the dirty work,” Rollo said, shimming a red-stained hand against Keith’s hair. Keith grinned a little, sheepishly, still staring as the skin under the thread tugged tight, and plucked at Rollo’s flesh.

“What was it? What was the body?” Keith asked.

Rollo grinned down at him with a cheeky smirk, and a wink. “A big nasty _rat_. And I’m not talkin’ about you, hotshot.”

Later that night, when Keith and Pidge were able to convince Hunk that Rollo still had his hand, they eavesdropped on the adults conversing about the rat Rollo took out not far from the house. The lantern was hung up on one of the rafters overhead, and they watched the shadows spread away from their figures. 

Nyma had her head in her hands. “This is awful. There can’t just be one of them.”

“They’re probably all around the house now,” one of them said. “Once the humans spot ‘em, we’re done for.”

“Even before then we’re done for,” Rollo said. “We need to leave _now_. There could be hundreds of them at this point. Pretty soon the rest of ‘em are gonna come wandering to our house, especially if one of them found it.”

Keith nibbled on the tips of his fingers as he looked over at Pidge, who then raised her eyes to where Hunk was barely keeping back tears. They crept away from the kitchen to reconvene in their shared room. “You heard Rollo—I should have just left yesterday,” Pidge told them. “And you two should have come with me.”

“ _Nooo_ ,” Hunk moaned, “What about Nyma and the others? They gotta come with us.”

“It was just _one rat_ ,” Keith countered. “I doubt any others will find us. Rollo can take care of them. You saw his battle scar.”

There were three other kids in that house with Keith, Hunk, and Pidge. Nyma tended to pamper Hunk the most, and he adored her for it. That night Nyma tucked them in and read to them from a journal she made herself. It was filled with stories she copied down from books down below. They were really only capable of reading books that were already off the shelves, which made it less suspicious when they left them where they found them. 

Nyma taught all of the kids to read. Afterwards, Keith realized how few small people knew how to read, and if they read, they weren’t very good at it. Nyma made sure to remedy this for Keith, Hunk, and Pidge. Pidge’s large appetite for literature helped, which led to an entire week spent in a library after the day Nyma closed the book and kissed their foreheads one last time.

“Is Rollo gonna be all right?” Hunk asked. Nyma squeezed his hand affectionately, and offered a smile that wasn’t at all strained, like Keith expected it to be.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine,” she said. “Now, you three get some rest. It’ll be a big day tomorrow.”

Late that night, there was a crash somewhere on the first floor, and a shriek of terror from down the hall. The kids in the other shared room were yelling the names of the adults, and Keith jumped up from his bed and went to Hunk to keep him from bawling his eyes out. Nyma burst into their room and slammed the door shut behind her. Her hair was a mess, she was in her night gown, and used a metal pin in her hand to jam between the floorboards. 

She opened it up. The house itself was entirely made by small people, propped up between boxes and on top of wood blocks. Beneath the house there was a cavity that contained extra supplies, things they no longer needed. Nyma lowered all three of them down into that cavity, and before Hunk could drag her down with them, she pulled away and shoved the floorboard back into place against the supporting beams.

Between the cracks of the wood blocks, propping up the house, Keith could see the shadows of massive creatures maneuvering around the walls. They would stand up on their two back legs and claw at the side of the house, breaking holes into it, and making horrible sounds in the face of Nyma’s sharp metal pin. They released high-pitched squeals that sent the three of them squeezing their eyes shut and clamping their hands over their ears. 

Keith huddled against the ground, against a plastic clip and Pidge, who curled up against his side, shaking in her oversized bed shirt and shorts. He squeezed his eyes shut until he felt something hot and sticky drip onto his scalp, followed by another. He looked up at the floorboards over their head, and through the cracks he could see the fur of a rat laying on its side, its matted hair peaking through the wood, dripping red.

“After the rats left, Hunk, Pidge, and I ditched the place,” Keith said as he provided a brief, abridged version for Lance. He left out the parts that still gave Pidge nightmares. “There wasn’t anyone left except us, so… we went in search of Pidge’s family. We didn’t have any other objectives anyway.”

“Did you find them?” Lance asked, and Keith shook his head. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, well, things have been better since then,” he said. “What about you?”

Lance seemed startled to be on the receiving end of a question. After floundering for a moment, he shut up and thought for a while. At last, he came to a conclusion: “Well, I’m seventeen, and I’ve been visiting Grandma Allura every summer since I was five, up until a few years ago. My mom works a lot, and my dad works in a different city right now, so right now neither of them can really look after me.”

“Why would they need to look after you?” Keith asked.

“Medical reasons,” he admitted, and after a moment added, “Well, I can’t really stop there. I should probably explain that, right? Okay, so there’s this thing called a heart murmur, and for the most part it doesn’t do anything, it just makes your heartbeat irregular or whatever. You can hear it with a stethoscope, the blood passing through a heart valve. I had it as a kid but it never caused any problems.”

“What happened then?” 

“As it turns out, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Lance said with a soft laugh. It was the sort of laugh people made when they didn’t really see the humor in the situation. “The blood that goes through the aortic valve pumps the wrong way, which doesn’t sound good at all and it isn’t because it means my heart has to work faster. Essentially I have an enlarged heart.”

“That sounds like a empathy problem to me.”

At this, Lance seemed so surprised by the joke that he howled with laughter and startled the dog. Keith chuckled, but it was the sort of chuckle people made when they didn’t see the humor. He wondered if he should be more concerned about Lance. His condition sounded serious, so he asked if it was. 

“It is serious,” Lance said. “The last surgery was unsuccessful.”

“What does that mean for you?” Keith asked, and faltered at the sight of Lance shrugging. It was a strange to find someone who didn’t even know the outcome of their health. It was the sort of thing Keith used to stress about before realizing that people like him, small people, died every day. Humans died every day.

“I’m here until we figure out what the verdict is. It might lead to heart failure, it might not,” Lance said, and turned onto his back. “Best not to think too hard about it. It really gets my blood going.”

Keith would have laughed, had Lance’s condition not been terminal.

After talking with Lance and saying his farewells, Keith hopped off the rock and left in the direction of home. He couldn’t see much of the house with the meadow grass blocking his view, but if he could see it, he would see Haggar standing at the deck with her hands on her hips. She studied Lance for another moment before turning back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all I have written, but I'm thinking that with Winter Break NOW UPON US, I'll have more time to write (haha, which is funny, because I usually make time to write daily). I am working on a webcomic though (not Voltron related) which is exciting! And that also means I'll need a side project on the side of that--as I usually do--so I'll probably start another Voltron fantasy AU thing...
> 
> And after writing all that I just realized how absurd that all sounds. The plan always changes.


End file.
